Luhmann, Niklas .
Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity .
2002 . Stanford University Press . Stanford California . ISBN
0-8047-4123-9
Preface
Luhmann likes to
theorize, to ‘think for its own sake ‘ [Preface IX].
Introduction: The
Self-Positing Society
(William Rasch)
The goal of Western
philosophical tradition is to understand the cosmos and to discover
the purpose and meaning of all human life.
Philosophy as a
quest for wisdom is a quest for universal knowledge, for knowledge of
the whole, .. , the knowledge of the natures of all things: the
natures in their totality are the ‘the whole’ (Leo Strauss 1988).
This knowledge may
never be achieved but its possibility must be confirmed (p1).
Reason serves as the
bond between human nature and the nature of the cosmos and to deny it
is to foster incomprehensibility for the individual and the species
(p 2).
Modernity is
characterized by the loss of faith in this reason linking human
nature and the cosmos (p2). The outcome of our reasoning is often
unpredictable and infinite: the whole disappears beyond an infinite
horizon; in this ‘world picture’ we no longer feel embedded in
the whole (p2). The whole remains as a mythical origin or a utopian
telos but it remains invisible: the mission has become historical
(p2). This modernist philosophy is exhausted in the 20-th century:
‘At any rate, what has dominated in both the philosophical and
the social-theoretical projects of the past hundred years has been an
intense concentration on the immanence* of the posited** world’
(*quality of remaining within a system …, ** put forward as a fact
or basis for an argument) [p 2].
’The whole that
is modernity is the whole that strains to see itself and thus a whole
that forever divides itself with every observation into more and more
‘facts’’ [p 3]. This whole now becomes self-referential,
and hence paradoxical; philosophy becomes second-hand: observations
of observations. The general idea of the purpose of ‘observations
of observations’ is to find latencies and cure the personal
respectively correct the social error whence they originate [p3].
Luhmann radicalizes the observation of latencies by locating
latencies in all observations ‘that cannot be finally and
fundamentally accounted for. What is needed, then, is a theory that
can account for this lack of accountability’ [p4]. Some of the
themes treated there that were relevant for the twenty-century
modernists are: self-reference, paradox and partiality of observation
[p4]
.
Self and Not-Self
The paradox involved
in self consciousness is that to refer to Self is to distinguish it
from itself; in so doing the Self makes of itself something else than
itself. To be conscious of itself, it must be conscious of other as
Self and hence split itself into two. It must posit itself as the
Self (self-positing) and as its negation (reflected object) the
not-Self [p4]. This must occur simultaneously, not as an
afterthought. But it is logically impossible to posit itself as Self
(A) and as its negation not-Self (-A) and so the Self loses its
identity. But the Self originally enables the existence of the
not-Self and the not-Self annihilates the Self, .., hence a logical
paradox. [p 5]. This paradox is resolved through the introduction of
the concepts of the finitude of space and quantity. If Self and
not-Self are thought of as complementary: they are mutually
exclusive, they limit one another and they occupy different parts of
space. They become divisible and indeed define that very notion [p
5]. But now a double negation comes into view: reference to Self as
the not not-Self, another paradox [p 5]. This is resolved by
introducing a quantifiably determinate self stands in opposition to
or contradiction from the absolute self.: ‘That self still
remains – and must remain – invisible and without predicate if it
is to serve as the undivided ground for the unity of the difference
between self and not-self. The absolute self is ‘equal to itself’
and ‘posited as indivisible; whereas the self to which the not-self
is opposed is posited as divisible. Hence, insofar as there is a
not-self opposed to it, the self is itself in opposition to the
absolute self’ [pp. 5-6]. Self positing has severed self from
not-self in a limited space of mutual determination, and severing the
absolute self from that limited space of the (now empirical) self and
its partner the not-self. The paradox is of a self that alienates
itself from itself in the act of self-positing [p 6].
Stuk overgeslagen,
moeilijk door te komen.
Part: Husserl,
Science, Modernity
1. The Modern
Sciences and Phenomenology
I
The
peasant-artisanal family economy has disappeared from Europe (and the
world). Life may take place in families or similar communities, but
it depends on markets and ‘organizations of professional work. The
ensuing transformations are perceived by the individual as external
and intractable. ‘The integration of the individual and society
is becoming a matter of market forces [Konjuncturen] and careers
[Karrieren] – K.u.K., if you will’[p 34]. Transformation on
the macro-level are the developments of the financial markets,
relocation of work to cheap labor countries and massive demographic
movements. In the political sphere there are relocation to cheap
labor countries and migration issues. ‘The fact that
‘regulation’ and ‘intervention’ have become prominent
political concepts betrays a new kind of awareness of the problem’
[p 35]
. The availability of atomic energy has had a large consequence
for warfare and energy production. It is now possible to interfere
directly in genetic structures determining life. Ecology now for the
major part faces self-induced challenges. With each gain in
knowledge, the sciences produce more ignorance. Husserl considers
technology a modern phenomenon; it is applied science. He sees
modernity in the light of the fall of rationality, namely waiting for
the technical realization of science (you cannot blame Newton for the
effects on the ‘lifeworld’). But today we believe technology does
not depend on the tools and developments of scientific discovery
alone: you cannot simply look it up and execute a procedure, you have
to mess around experimenting. The humanities have distinguished
themselves from the natural sciences by becoming self-reflexive. So
fared the natural sciences amongst each other: they observe objects
that observe themselves. Objective cognition had to be given up as a
fiction since Heisenberg and if an ‘objective reality’ exists it
is not available for observation or to refer to it. ‘Geist’ is
not required for them, they are projects of cognition in the natural
sciences. The métarécit (comprehensive explanation or overarching
narrative about historical meaning and knowledge, offering social
legitimation) of today: there are no métarécits capable of
consensus. But philosophies can be (run the risk to be) inspired by
the social issues of their era, without it becoming expressed in
their arguments (philosophy involving market capitalism is an
example). Husserl pointed at a changed meaning of critique: ‘Critique
– that only means, anymore, observing observations, describing
descriptions from a standpoint that is itself observable’ [p
37].
II
Problems with
Husserl’s text are: 1. It is focused on Europe only assuming that
its traditions would not change or dissolve into others 2. Only when
society came to grow on a global scale it became necessary to keep a
control over the concepts related to it. Now what was discovered and
what existed previously is declared part of culture. Only now existed
culture as one could speak about it in conceptual terms. Philosophies
of many disciplines are possible, including the philosophy of
culture. But what would be the meaning of a culture of philosophy
(e.g. a European flavor)? ‘Must philosophy now organize
resistance against culture in the name of authenticity, genuineness,
originality? .. Culture absorbs even that’[p 39]. But
the question is raised what conditions philosophy must satisfy if is
to be culture and to be comparable to all other elements in the
category. What form must it have such that it reconciles philosophy
with its own contingencies. 3. Husserl solves this philosophy-culture
problem with an asymmetric distinction: such that one side of the
distinction dominates the distinction itself, such that the maker of
the distinction is the master of both sides of it (l’englobement
du contraire’ [Dumont 1966, 107-8]). In this way the humanities
dominate the distinction between the humanities and the natural
sciences, because only they can ask in what spirit the natural
sciences are conducting research. This is transjunctional: by making
the distinction the middle is indeed excluded but the maker of the
distinction cannot takes sides and masters the situation securing a
place at the side he prefers. 4. The European resolve to not accept
any tradition unquestioningly is itself a tradition and legitimated
by tradition: anti-traditionalism as a tradition. Philosophy must be
expected to reflect on this, not assume it a given. This is an
entelechy, an original and still-possible motivator; the original and
the goal are the same: ‘.. which derived its demands upon the
virtue of those now living from the origin of a state or of a noble
family and could therefore treat neither the past as vanished nor the
future as open’ [p 41]. Following the tradition of
self-critical anti-tradition, the outcome may be very different from
the paradigm of that tradition itself; but the alternative is to turn
to an uncritical self-critical stance.
III
Arguments rendering
philosophy uninteresting: philosophy as a museum / critique
understood as the emphatic rejection of the object of critique /
negligence of sociological phenomenology that runs into the trap of
objectivism bound to the non-concept of ‘intersubjectivity’ as a
non-existing way to negotiate between objectivism and subjectivism
for sociologists only. Postwar sociology did not espouse the critique
of Husserl (?) on the relation between tech and science. The
functional differentiation of society was seen as a concertation of
all functional systems to improve individuals’ overall conditions
of life. ‘In this description, more wealth, more freedom, more
chances for individual self-realization were expected, in part
through an evolutionary development, in part through a scientifically
informed politics’ [p 42]. In this double faith (evolution /
politics) lay the belief that the idea of modernity contained an
immanent rationality and that the development of society is an
achievement of society itself. The problem sits in the
political-ideological differences of opinion between the
liberal-democratic and socialist paths. The modernist project has
vanished, now the key terms are freedom in the sense of a market
economy, in the sense of freedom of expression, of electoral
democracy, or freedom of research pursuing its own goals. This
concept of a largely successful path to a more modern modernity is
detrimental and hardly credible ‘in view of consequences that
are already evident’ [p 43].
IV
Husserl insisted on
a transcendental foundation of phenomenology: concentration on the
transcendental subject and not a theory-free approach to things. He
opposed an objectivistic conception of science, void of spirit.
Distinction is the discovery of self-reflection, independent of all
empirical evidence – as transcendental evidence as it were.
Everyone can find it in him- or herself. The theory that describes
this, relying on its own evidence, is hence called ‘transcendental
phenomenology’ [p 45]. Now phenomena are no longer the thing to
penetrate cognition but the thing itself, the ‘realia’ that are
part of the operation of consciousness. The difference between noesis
(faculty of the mind necessary to determine what is true or real) and
noema (object or content of thought, judgment or perception) between
presenting and presented that ensures the describability of the world
and that constitutes determinable objects. The above can be
reformulated as a difference between self-reference and
hetero-reference, revealing that the references condition each other:
consciousness cannot self-reference if it cannot distinguish itself
from something else and there would be no phenomena for consciousness
if it cannot distinguish them from self-indications. ‘The
operational method of consciousness that steers by means of
intentions is possible only on the basis of this distinction between
self-reference and hetero-reference’ [p 47]. ‘Consciousness
exists as accessible to itself only in its own operations, and hence
there can be time only in the form of momentarily present retention
or protention’ [p 47]. Note: According to Husserl, perception
has three temporal aspects, retention, the immediate present and
protention and a flow through which each moment of protention becomes
the retention of the next. Retention
is the process whereby a phase of a perceptual act is retained
in our consciousness. It is a presentation of that which is no longer
before us and is distinct from immediate experience. Protention
is our anticipation of the next moment. The moment that has
yet to be perceived. [wikipedia 18 feb 18, lemma protention]
A link exists
between this theory and neuroscience which shows that present, past
and future are intertwined, also in memory: “memory is not only
about the past, but is also about the future”. While memory serves
as the ability to recall previous experiences, the recall itself is
not solely directed toward the past, but is guided by the present for
the service of the future. Now the concept of time is introduced: the
present is an incision between the past and the future. But if
consciousness has an inner subjective time, then why is this covered
with the concept of an external objective, chronological time in
which it has to reconstruct itself as self-moving, as a stream of
consciousness [p 47]? But this is beyond the descriptive internal
findings of phenomenology; however, to ask for the ontological
metaphysical appears to be a dead end. In the European tradition of
time as a flow Husserl measures time as a schema of before
(retention), during (present) and protention (after). On the one hand
this technical approach to time gives a problem with the earlier
critique of technology. But on the other hand if time is not a
measurable thing then what justifies the image of time as a flow? The
difficulty starts already with the fact that we don’t know what
time is; but
there are two footholds: 1. the operational manner of intending
implies the existence of time, at least the condition must be
transcended and 2. given that self-reference and hetero-reference
exist then one must be allowed the time to reflect on the question of
‘Why does that interest
me at all? If one
disregards time or if one relies on an ontologically oriented logic
that cannot include time, one encounters paradoxes, as technicians of
formal calculations know. One must either ‘Gödelize’- that is,
transcend the boundaries drawn by the premises of calculus – or
‘temporalize’, that is, endow the calculating system with time.
It is then no longer a matter of true / false but rather of flip /
flop’ [pp.
48 – 49].
The connection between
operation, time, oscillation and bistability (self- and
hetero-reference) supports itself and the unity sought can be the
oscillation itself. But that implies a kind of a memory to grasp what
has been released to be reoccupied: ‘Memory
objectivizes, it contracts, it reckons the relation of identity
between the designations of observations that, as operations, can be
carried out only one after the other’
[p 49]
. Concerning recursive
functions, the re-entry of forms into themselves, the system must be
equipped with memory and with the ability to oscillate between the
distinctions used. These functions can be separated only if one
divides them into past (memory) and future (the possibility of
oscillation). It appears as though distinguishing time in time is not
a measurement nor a processual substratum but it is necessary to
endow systems with the possibility to operate in a sensible
self-referential way [p 49-50].
V
That is possible if the distinction consciousness/phenomenon is
translated to self-reference/hetero-reference. This opens the way to
a cognitive science oriented towards cognitive systems, a so called
empirical epistemology. Cognitive systems operate with a distinction
between self-reference and hetero-reference. They can calculate (sic)
an idea of the environment only through hetero-reference
(phenomenologically). But the environment remains operatively
inaccessible because a system cannot operate in its environment. Also
systems cannot distinguish the environment as they designate it and
the environment as it is. But the idea is that the environment must
be cognitively accessible lest the distinction between self-reference
and hetero-reference would collapse. In that case hetero-reference
(consciousness of phenomena) would in the end only be self-reference
(consciousness). This must have consequences for rationality and
Western reason à la Husserl. But this line of thought is coming
close to the idea of a/p systems. It belongs in ELENS or perhaps in
ECOG (DPB). If reality is seen as an illusion then one ends up with
radical constructivism, the complete (including knowledge) operative
inaccessibility of the environment. Self-reference makes an image of
the environment based on self chosen distinctions without a correlate
in the environment. But this conflicts with the requirements of a
systems-rationality because it resolves the distinction between
self-reference and hetero-reference into self-reference. But it can
be illustrative to work with this paradoxical limit-idea of
paradoxicality (sic) and an illusion of reality. The tradition of
radical constructivism developed as follows: logical self-correction
> latent unconscious projection surrounding the apparatus of
knowledge > language dependent view of reality > reflexivity,
the application of these theories to themselves. All of these tools
for psychological and social self-correction and self-discipline. The
suspicion of projection was universalized and made autonomous (as a
school of thought I assume DPB) as Radical Constructivism. But how
can the illusion of reality be saved if cognition is produced
internally through the procedure above? Given also that that illusion
depends on the structures of the identification and distinctions of
the system and their recursive use?
The function of the illusion of reality lies in the enabling of the
transition from one construction to another. In a therapeutic
(pathological/normal) scheme ‘normality’ can be defined as a less
painful, more bearable construction, and not a better adaptation
(this is reminiscent of the idea that organisms optimize towards a
reduction of stress, and to express their fitness as such DPB). And
even when therapy is not in order then the illusion of reality offers
the possibility to make a transition from one construction to
another. Modern society is a polycentric and polycontextual system
allowing for many different frames. He existence of transjunctional
operations is required that make it possible to change from one
context to another and in each case to mark which distinctions are
accpeted and rejected. A 2-value logic is insufficient to cognize
reality and reality would in that case be an object isolated from
knowledge and without describable qualities. ‘Suppositions of
reality are needed, however, only in order to accept a multiplicity
of incommensurable constructions and, when needed, to move from one
of them to another. Radical Constructivism can accept exactly that.
For reality is then nothing more than the correlate of the paradox of
the self-referential unity of self-reference and hetero-reference (or
of subject and object, or of consciousness and phenomenon). And this
simultaneously implies that one cannot linger with reality in itself.
Like a paradox, reality requires ‘unfolding’. It is only an aid
for reaching one construction from another. Consequently, the reality
that is given as a paradox is the only knowledge that is
unconditionally given, that cannot be conditioned in the system –
and therefore remains unproductive’[p 52].
VI
‘How can an extremely formal theoretical configuration help us
in the face of the countless problems with which our society presents
us and which we increasingly recognize as consequences of its own
structures?’ [p 53]. A form of operative constructivism has
revealed itself, which goes under various brand names: formal
calculus, 2nd order cybernetics, autopoietic systems,
radical constructivism. But these constructs are homeless in the
sense that they do not belong to any philosophical tradition. ‘Its
manner of argumentation sounds rather naive to the ears of trained
philosophers (above all in the cases of Maturana and
von Glasersfeld) [p 53, Why? DPB]. Autopoiesis as a concept leads
to a conceptuality that is not bound to a type of operation, such as
chemical, physical, neurological, biological &c., ‘but that
can organize, on these different bases, the reproduction of a
difference between system and environment and, independently thereof,
can organize cognition’[p 54]. This concept, and others, have
turned away from the figure of the transcendental subject. ‘Or
is a theoretical construction present in transcendental
phenomenology that, if one may formulate it so paradoxically, can
separate itself from itself, can become independent of itself?’[pp.
54-55]. To establish this issue no longer purely belongs to the realm
particular to consciousness, but to the realm of the emergence of
order as such. ‘The rigor of this departure from the
transcendental can be recognized if one considers the
possibility of omitting consciousness as the medium of the formation
of forms and, despite this, of maintaining the structure that was
discovered by Husserl, namely the insight into the interrelation of
the conditions of the capacity for operations , the separation and
simultaneous processing of hetero-reference and self-reference as
well as temporality from the standpoint of the respective operations.
I believe that this is possible if one determines to
presuppose meaning as the general medium for the formation of forms
and then to distinguish whether systems are constructed on the basis
of intentional acts of consciousness or on the basis of
communication. .. I think that such a theoretical program,
which radically distinguishes between psychic and social systems, is
practicable, but this is not the place to demonstrate this. The
question is only: How would the landscape of theory look if
such a theoretical program would be practicable? .., but
rather a theory that keeps the paradoxing and deparadoxing of its
principal differences open in the event that the forms it can offer
are no longer persuasive. It would be a theory of
self-referential, nontrivial, therefore unreliable and unpredictable
systems that must separate themselves from an environment in order to
gain their own time and their own values, which limit their
possibilities. It would be a theory that assigns to cybernetics the
task of controlling the indeterminacies that are generated in the
system itself. There is no question then that one can construct the
good old subject in this way. However, the decisive factor is that
social systems, too – society too – can be described with this
concept’ [pp.
55-56,
this can go to ELENS; PS I
like the underlined phraseology!].
VII
Given the possibility to distinguish operations that constitute
meaning concerning social systems and psychic systems in their
recursive self-reproduction, respectively it has now become more
possible to introduce Husserl’s intuition of a theory into a
different ‘lifeworld’. ‘One could imagine that a
theory of society could be worked out on the basis of these
sketched-out foundations, a theory in which communication would be
understood as basic operation, information as hetero-reference,
utterance as self-reference, and understanding as a prerequisite of
the transferal of communicatively condensed meaning into further
communications, with the option of looking for the focal point of the
connecting communication either in hetero-reference or in
self-reference, an option that perpetually reopens the theory and
that is to be perpetually decided anew’ [pp. 56-57; this
is a description of a system for (open-ended) cultural evolution;
EIMM ELENS ECOG EMEM maar ook ELOG]. Communication cannot operate
outside of the system. A system can distinguish between
self-reference and hetero-reference and is bilaterally stable and
open to the future. ‘It (such a theory-type DPB) could
record the moods of the time, such as the fascination with
self-referential circles and paradoxes, the necessary incorporation
of ignorance into knowledge, and the interaction of construction and
deconstruction on the basis of self-limiting system operations’[p
57]. Science like anything does not move by flashes of genius, but
instead it must start a journey with some historical and factual
state of knowledge that defines and limits its susceptibility to
stimulus. ‘It is thus rather an evolutionary process that
records certain chance impulses but cannot register others at all.
Therein lies the flexibility in the distinctions
that can be applied to a given way of formulating knowledge – . One
who wishes to opt out of all of these distinctions has hardly a
chance of being understood. On the other hand, .. – that one who opts
within these frames is compelled to reformulate already
already-used-up thoughts, and thereby covers up the already visible
theoretical intuition’[p 58, underline originally italic by
author].
VIII
Concerning the redescribing of existing descriptions (and this is not
the same as a critique or an attempt at progress or
hermeneutics=interpretation of the meaning): ‘In view of the
facility of this kind of textual production, one can redescribe it,
too, and thereby surpass the self-understanding of its authors’[p
59]. A redescription of a redescription of a description is an
autological process and it does not provide a grounding nor does it
need to go on infinitely: ‘It does what it does and in this
manner it represents itself. It itself operates autopoietically,
without aiming for a palliative conclusive formula’[p 59]. It
is possible that this style of thinking requires a different relation
to time. In Husserl’s universe consciousness observes time ‘out
of the corner of its eye’ [p 60]. Time was conceived in the
Western tradition of philosophy, as a river, a movement, a process.
Now descriptions of descriptions are the past and prospect of future
descriptions are the future. ‘It understands its own present as
the difference between its past and its future. It articulates its
position no longer in time, but rather with the help of time. ..;
rather time is now a definite form of observation, a
world-construction with the help of the difference between the
infinite horizons of past and present’[p 60].
2. The Modernity of Science
I
Science represents itself as ‘modern’ and it is widely seen as
such, and unlike some other activities its modernity seems to go
without saying. Regional and historical contingencies exist, but a
regional comparison does not explain what is historically new:
novelty is in the final analysis not in comparison to Europe’s own
history. Modern society creates its own newness by stigmatizing the
old. Society self-describes through degradation of the world of one’s
father to ‘ancient history’. This practice burdens
self-interpretation and leads to controversy (one is a father’s
child). The modrnity of science consisted in the progress of
knowledge and in this way science dictated its own modernity, it wás
a constant modernity. Then problems arose because new fields of study
were opened such that theories were put in their final classical form
or enhanced the powers of dissolution of existing knowledge into new
forms. But now the connection between science and society is lost,
because they could no longer be categorized; some elements of science
newly came into existence; others before them had been considered
true but were now dissolved into them or replaced by them. Only with
the incommensurability theory of Kuhn were theories that apparently
addressed some issue in a different paradigm to co-exist in history
(their contributions valued). And with that practice science’s
claim to modernity went overboard: all theories in some order come to
claim their place in history. A particular paradigm’s claim to
superiority is only grounded in its own view: the constructivism of
modern epistemology is grounded in itself only.
NO. From the analysis presented here the situation is the other way
around: a connection exists between functional differentiation of the
social system and a constructivist self-understanding of science:
‘Modern society’s form of differentiation makes
possible, or even enforces, the autonomy of separate functional
areas; this is accomplished by the differentiation of certain
operationally closed, autopoietic systems. Functional
differentiation thus imposes on systems an obligation to reflect on
their own singularity and irreplaceability, but an
obligation that must also take into account that there are other
functional systems of this kind in society’[p 63]. Knowledge is
one form of social ‘potency’ among others: in different arenas
its relevance is experienced and valued differently. Communication
presupposes knowledge, society requires knowledge to communicate, yet
society does not depend on this particular expert scientific
knowledge for the autopoiesis of its communication as such [p 63].
Science in specific must make new achievements and not define
society, contrary to other forms of communications in society. This
state of affairs of a loss of reference (also loss of experience,
loss of meaning, loss of belief) is registered by the stances of
relativism, conventionalism and constructivism. Their content is
negative when historically compared to the prevailing metaphysical
ontology including essentialism, religion and categorial approach to
nature, supposing a correct order. These must fail and relativity and
contingency come into play, namely the provisional and hypothetical
character of knowledge.
Truth is not possible without reference to an external world. But not
only the designated (referred to) must be real, given that the
operation of reference is real. This statement is insufficient
because the operation is inaccessible to itself and to the observer
it can be referred to only as something he designated: tis is the
controversy between realism and constructivism – as if they were
incompatible. Modern society must formulate its epistemological
problem, namely the problem of reference and the problem of truth,
differently (now it is bivalent): true = positive = being = reference
(&designating, claiming, recognizing). Untrue is to confirm the
act of referring. As a consequence a loss of reference comes as a
loss of truth. This logically leads to the paradox of nihilism: only
the untruth can be true. Logic is structurally not rich enough to
represent more complex situations (DPB: why is this so: Boolean =
TM). It is required to separate the problems of truth from the
problems of reference. The starting point for these reflections is
difference-theoretical: they arise from a conception of reference and
of truth as form in the sense ’.. – as a two-sided form, as
difference, as the marking of a boundary whose crossing takes time’
[p 65]
. DPB: is this similar to the concept of difference of Deleuze
as p/ Weaver PhD? With regards to truth: this is a code to mark the
(self-referential) difference between truth and untruth. Regarding
reference: there is a distinction between self-reference (internal
reference) and external reference: as both sides of the distinction
they exist only as a pair of opposites. Accepting this formulation of
reference the problem plays on two levels. ‘Reference itself is
nothing but the achievement of an observational designation’:
each reference designates something (it has an object) [p 65]. ‘The
opposite concept here is simply operating’, because unlike
referring, operating is an objectless enactment (sic) [p 65]. ‘In
the observation, the difference between observation and operation can
be reformulated in an innovative way as the distinction between
self-reference and external reference. Self-reference refers to what
the operation ‘observation’ enacts. External reference refers to
what is thereby excluded’ [p 65]. (Intuitively internal
(self-)reference is the result of having put oneself in a relation to
something through an observation and in the case of external
reference not having done so, respectively DPB). Now the predicate
‘real’ is no longer attributable to what is designated, but to
what is distinguished – the distinction (either a relation exists
because it is observed or it is not DPB) [p 65]. ‘And this holds
for every distinction – for the distinction between self-reference
and external reference as well as for the distinction between true
and untrue’ [p 65]. Now the problem bifurcates into a problem
of distinctions of {distinctions of self-reference and external
reference} and of {distinctions of true / untrue}. These two
distinctions are of different dimensions (‘at right angels to each
other’): self-referential observations can be both true and untrue
&c. There is no (automatic) privilege left for the truth of the
observer’s introspection, but self-observation and self-description
remains a certainty without criteria; but only the operation of
observing (the capability to see) is put beyond doubt. But what is
referred to (designated, objectified, recognized) can be designated
both as true and untrue, ‘depending on the programs that serve
as criteria for a correct classification for these values’ [p
66]. A systems can only construct its environment internally; it has
a different access to itself than to its environment. But the
interpretation cannot be that the self-reference is easier to achieve
than external reference, produces better results, or has a higher
probability of truth. The observing operation is a communication that
exposes itself in its enactment and not only in its effects (this
means that the behavior ís the signal DPB). By the fact that the
system is operating the distinction regarding its ‘form’ is
enforced. Self-reference and external reference can be coded in the
same code (I find this odd, because external reference is about what
it is not and that is a lot to be aware of and to code accordingly
DPB). ‘.. and this encoding takes place in a different way
depending which of its function systems society uses’ [p 66] (I
think these functions are Francis´s aspects). This situation repeats
itself at the level of function systems, which themselves also
distinguish between self-reference and external reference in their
operations [p 66]. Modern pattern of the social system is articulated
through its function systems; they participate in the structural
richness of modern society ‘.. – a society that only they put
in this form’ [p 66]. These functions require descriptions that
are rich in structure to account for the distinction of distinctions
as above. The ensuing semantic forms are modern; but they are
historically conditioned by their socio-structural cause and their
semantic expression.
Constructivist epistemology can deal with this state of affairs; this
has led to a theory that describes cognition in a radical way as a
self-produced distance [p 67]. This seems to imply an increased
knowledge of knowledge; however, this falls short of explaining the
break between radical constructivism and transcendental idealism
(where did that come from? DPB). ‘If, on the other hand,
one defines modern society structurally in terms of functional
differentiation and derives from this principle its semantic
requirements through such concepts as polycontexturality (r! DPB),
second-order observation, and the distinction of distinctions –
especially the distinction between problems of encoding (for example,
true/untrue) and problems of reference (self-reference
and external reference) – then, in any case, an opportunity for
observations and descriptions presents itself that is richer in
structures’[pp. 66-67].
II
The conclusion is that the specificity of modernity is to be found in
the differences that are produced when an observer designates
something and makes a distinction. Another route to arrive at this
conclusion is as follows. Another description of modernity is in its
tendency to formalize, idealize, technicalize, account &c. ‘At
stake is the fact that science accepts technology as a form of its
own (of science ?DPB). .. We are only asking: in what sense is
technicalization (we continue to use this word) a form? And what is
the other side of this form?’ [p 66]. Husserl distinguishes
technicalization from the ‘lifeworld’, namely the always already
employed concrete foundation of meaning for subjective intentions. He
goes on to make a distinction between the self-realization of reason
under the guidance of philosophy; and the other side of that is the
actualization of meaningful human life under the guidance of reason.
To explain the arbitrariness of the behavior of the state the
behavior of individuals had be treated as unreliable. In the same
vein individual cognitive experience had to be unreliable to set off
against calculable measurements. ‘Once one has made a
distinction – and one cannot begin without one – and then continues
in one’s action, then an order of increased complexity arises,
intelligible to everyone, which leaves only the options of either
agreeing or refusing to join in. Consensus can only be
achieved by reduction; or, in order to formulate it paradoxically, by
relinquishing consensus. .. Nothing else is meant when we
speak of differentiation in the terminology of systems theory. In
exactly this sense, technicalization (or, to remind the reader,
formalization, idealization &c.) can be regarded as a specific
element of modern science’ [p 69].
Scientific theory and technology find one another in their
simplification in the sense of disregarding other things. But
economic and accounting technology and in so doing calculates which
behavior is too and which is not profitable. But human individuals
are not as material. This leads to a disregard of what a human being
is for himself. Modern society has made these abstractions central to
its existence and has left it to the individual to distance himself
from this dependence and ‘imagine his ownmost being [sein
Eigenstes] as the center of the world – in a mode ‘free of
technology’, if one may say so’[p 70]. Technology is a
simplification. But the world is not a simple place. These are facts
that need no discovery: science is not discovery but construction [p
70]. Also the world is not covered by a phenomenal surface that forms
an ‘appearance in order to discern a mathematical or categorical
framework that carries the world’ [p 70]. No, science tries out
simplifications, incorporates them in a given world, and figures out
if the isolations required for these experiments are successful.
Science must reflect on this; this reflection requires a double
formulation. In systems theory differentiation is about the
operational closure of a system that is simultaneously inclusive and
exclusive. Concerning complex systems: ‘.. the construction of
complexity can be initiated only by a reduction of complexity’
[p 71]
. ‘The modernity of all function systems, including
science, consists in the effects of these interrelated conditions.
These effects block a description of the world as an object given to
(or ‘standing opposed to’) the observer. Correspondingly,
the problem of the unity of the difference between cognition and its
object loses the classical significance it used too have in guiding
reflection’ [p 71]. Science does not represent the world as it
is (but a simplification) and hence it cannot present itself as the
instructor of others about it. However it explores possible
constructions that function as forms and hence produce a difference.
III
A social theory that intends to take the issues above into account
encounters this paradox that is relevant for both society and for the
world. On the one hand a ‘comprehensive global social system
[Weltgesellschaftssystem] has developed in an evolutionary process’
[p 72]
. In addition: ‘Everything that is communicated is
communicated in society. Everything that happens, happens occurs in
the world’[p 72]. For that reason they cannot be viewed as a
unity: ‘.. the unity of society (of the world) cannot be
re-introduced into society (the world). For each observation and
description requires a distinction for its own operation. The
observation of the One within the One, however, would have to include
what it excludes (that against which it distinguishes its
designation)’ [p 72]. This re-entry is possible but it requires
an imaginary space to replace the classical a priori of
transcendental philosophy. The paradox can be solved if it is
replaced with a distinction, between operations and observations in
this case; all operations are self-observing operations and all
observations must be enacted as operations: ‘We can then say:
the unity of the system is produced and reproduced operatively. The
operation, at the same time, observes itself – yet it does not
observe the the unity that includes it, that comes into being, and is
being changed, in this enactment. The observation of unity, in
contrast, is a special operation in the system (in the world), which
must use a special distinction (for example the distinction between
system and environment or the distinction between the world and
being-in-the-world) and which itself can also be oberved in the
process of its distinguishing and designating. The observation
and description of unity from within unity is therefore possible, but
only as an enactment of precisely this operation, only on the basis
of the choice of a distinction whose own unity remains imaginary, and
only in such as way that the operation ‘observation’ is itself
exposed to observation. We have thus reached the point where the
significance of second-order observation becomes evident. .. Instead
of appealing to final units, one observes observations, one describes
descriptions. At the second-order level, we arrive again at recursive
interrelations and begin to search for ‘eigenvalues’, which
remain unchanged in the course of the system’s operations. .. Put
differently, they are perhaps only functions to be fulfilled while a
very limited choice of functional equivalents is available’[p
73]. This is analogue to my quest for invariants concerning the
existence of firms DPB. Changing for another research or refraining
from it implies changing to other eigenvalues (or another attractor
DPB) which implies a catastrophe, namely the re-orientation to
another eigenvalue. If one wishes to not move towards another kind of
society then the only alternative for scientific research is
scientific research. In this way the observation of observations can
experience a ‘blind spot’ with regards to what he can see using
his distinctions and what he cannot see. With regards to second-order
observations, society can operate with the distinction
manifest/latent so as to include the second-order observer also.
Paradox and
Observation
3. The Paradox of Observing Systems
I
To submit formal structures to sociological analysis means to find
correlations between formal structures and social conditions. The
conditions and the structures were to be variables the values of
which would have to be contingent. But they are ‘natural’ with
regards to society and ‘necessary’, namely dependent on axioms in
the case of the formalisms. In order to do that one would have to
assert that the natural is artificial (produced by society) and the
necessary is contingent (different forms under different
conditions).These statements are paradoxical, but we need them to
differentiate observers (self- and external) as well as observations
(for instance for the self-observer they are natural while for an
external-observer they are artificial); but all the while the world
remains the same and hence the paradox (but Wolfram suspects a
solution: ‘I suspect that CA are in fact the same as systems in
nature’ DPB). An observer is supposed to decide which is which; but
who can observe the observer making the decision as well as the
decision, contingent for that particular observer? Can the observer
refuse to observe without taking the decision to, or does he have to
withdraw to the position of a nonobserving observer?
II
Paradox has a logical and a rhetorical use. The logical tradition
suppresses paradox making use of the distinction between being and
nonbeing; only being exists according to its own distinctions; being
is what it is (the observer can make true or false statements or (be)
correct(ed) by others). As a consequence being is framed by secondary
distinctions and not by its distinction from nonbeing:
‘Being does not need
to be distinguished from, or to exclude, nonbeing to be itself. It
simply is, by itself (nature) or by way of creation’
[p 80]
. The rhetorical tradition introduce paradoxical
statements to enlarge the frames of opinions and to prepare the
ground for innovation. The two traditions seem to be different and
rhetorical paradoxes seem to not show logical contradictions; are
they conventionally mere exercises of wit? No, the traditional
definition is to go beyond the limits of common sense: to deframe and
reframe the frame of normal thinking, namely of common sense. But to
deframe means to focus on the frames of common sense, and hence it
needs its own frame; it is required to look at the commonsensical
paradox from the outside and lead back to common sense [p 81]. Only
cancellations explains too little to carry the entire meaning. If
paradoxes are teleological operations aimed at a perfect state then
that state can be described as enriched common sense. But this is a
(Kantian) final cause without a finality and hence paradoxical; in
this sense ‘The rhetorical paradox, then, may be an autological
(word expressing a property it possesses DPB) operation,
infecting itself with whatever is a paradox’[p 81]. In the
logical (and since the work of Frege, Russell, Cantor the
mathematical) realm paradox is to be avoided. But if frames are
considered useful / worthwhile then we may describe the hierarchies
devised by he above as frames, not of commonsensical opinions but of
logical operations. If observing frames is serious then does the
distinction between rhetorical and logical paradoxes make sense at
all?
III
In the above it was discussed how a sociology of knowledge can
include objects such as mathematics and logic. Now we have to ask
the question: How is it possible to observe frames? ‘Whatever
difficulties may emerge during this investigation, we will certainly
need a medium that is the same on both sides of the frame, on its
inside and on its outside. I propose to call this medium meaning
(emphasis of the
author), and thereby exclude two other possibilities –
the world and truth. The world, .. , seems tto be too large. Truth,
on the other hand, is too narrow because it itself serves as a frame,
as the inner side of a form whose outside would be everything that is
not true. But what, then, is meaning?’ [p 82]. It was discussed
that paradoxes can be observed as deframing and reframing, as
deconstructing and reconstructing operations; the adopted concept of
meaning should not restrict the range of these operations. Examples
are the logical empiricism methods of the Viennese school that
enforce the exclusion of metaphysics as meaningless as well as the
subjective experience of individuals concerning the meaning of
something; these examples are not suitable because they exclude
unmarked possibilities and they are only valid in their respective
frames: ‘They are, that is, deframable (deconstructible)
meanings and do not fulfill the requirements of a medium that gives
access to both sides of any
(emphasis by the author) frame’[p 83]. A concept of meaning is
needed that coextensive (emphasis DPB) with the world; meaning
in this sense will have no outside, no negation, no antonym; every
possible use of this medium called ‘meaning’ will reproduce
meaning and even an attempt to cross the boundary into unmarked space
will be a meaningful operation. And hence a concept of meaning (a
medium) is needed that can assign meaning to emergent behavior and
its products. Meaning can be seen as the simultaneous presentation of
actuality and possibility (Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology):
‘The actual is given within a ‘horizon’ of further
possibilities. Since operationally closed systems consist
of operations only and have to renew them from moment to moment, they
can maintain their self-reproduction only by continuously actualizing
new meaning. This requires selection from many possibilities and,
therefore, will appear as information’ [p 83]. This is the
structure and dynamics of monads: meaning is embedded in how the
future is molded from the restrictions of actuality: what are the
attractors and the repellers embedded in the current instance of the
system that shape its future (DPB, monads, EIMM?, ELENS). On the
‘actual’ side of the actual/possible distinction that distinction
itself reappears while the system operates: ‘.. it is copied
onto itself so that the system may have the sense of being able to
continue actual operations in spite of an increasing change of
themes, impressions, intentions’ [p 83]. The structure of the
actual system attracts to some possible future states and is repelled
from others; but the current state shapes the domain of possibilities
of future states – and as the distinction is copied onto itself it
maintains particular traits (properties, distinctions) such that
particular corresponding themes impressions and intentions are
maintained in the system’s behavior. Yet in other words: ‘If
we observe such a reentry, we see a paradox. The reentering
distinction is the same and it is not the same. But the paradox does
not prevent the operations of the system. On the contrary, it is the
condition of the their possibility because their autopoiesis requires
continuing actuality with different
operations, actualizing different possibilities
(emphasis of the
author)’ [p 83-84]. The consequences of the basis of
psychic and social systems being in reentry are: 1) an imaginary
space is created that includes unmarked space and allows for
‘expressions of ignorance’ 2) the system is indeterminate,
and hence nontransparent to itself 3) every operation of the system
starts from its own output; and it needs a memory function to
distinguish remembering from forgetting 4) the system’s future is a
succession of marked and unmarked states, or self-referential and
hetero-referential states (it must oscillate between the sides of its
distinctions): ‘An oscillating system can preserve the
undecidability of whether something is inside or outside a form. It
can preserve and reproduce itself as a form, that is, as an entity
with a boundary, with an inside and an outside, and it can prevent
the two sides from collapsing into each other’[p 84]. ‘To
see (and we will say: to observe) possibilities and to use meaning as
a medium, the system will use the distinction between medium and
form. ‘Medium’ within this distinction means a loose coupling of
possibilities without regard to actual happenings, and ‘form’
means tight couplings that construct the form, for example a thing,
with an outside. Again, the medium is inside and outside, but the
attention of the system has limitations and observes only forms.
Forms are actualized in time just for a moment, but since the system
has a memory it can reactualize well-tried forms and direct its
operations from form to form, thereby reproducing the medium. The
distinction medium/form serves as a frame without outside , as an
internal frame that includes, via reentry, its own outside’
[pp. 84-85]
. DPB: there must be a relation between this
interpretation of memory ad the constructal law.
IV
Now a basis exists to observe the observer, and to enter the universe
of the Observing Systems. The expression observing/observer must be
adapted for use in this theory; it is now not only attentive sensual
perception: ‘In more recent literature, initiated by George
Spencer Brown, Humberto Maturana, and Heinz von Foerster, the term
corresponds to to the autopoietic self-reproduction of systems, to
the operation of reentry, and to the oscillation between marked and
unmarked states, to the inside and the outside of forms and
self-referential and hetero-referential indications. Observing means
making a distinction and indicating one side (and not the other side)
of the distinction‘ [p 85]. Normally an indication will
encompass a number of ‘nested’ categories: Bloomington and no
other university (in no other city), implies a double boundary,
indicating the city and the university from other cities and
universities, and the second from the unmarked spaces of all other
things respectively. Asking about fine wines in Bloomington, one is
forced to cross the second boundary with the unmarked space (B. from
its unmarked state) to go look for restaurants &c. Following this
procedure from frame to frame (form to form) will reproduce the
unmarked space; ‘It will maintain the world as severed by
distinctions, frames and forms, and maintained by its severance. “We
may take it”, to quote Spencer Brown, “that the world undoubtedly
is itself (i.e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to
see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to
make itself distinct from, and therefore false to,
itself”’ [p 85]. Any such system remains forever elusive to
itself; any such theory cannot be holistic: no part can represent the
whole:’The miracle of symbolization, the marvelous, that which
has been most admired by our tradition, has to be replaced by a
difference that, when observed, always regenerates the
unobservable. The operation of observing, therefore, includes
the exclusion of the unobservable, including, moreover, the
unobservable par excellence, observation itself, the
observation-in-operation [p 86]. The
place of the observer is in the unmarked state; from there it must
cross a boundary to make a distinction; as such the observer as a
system can only be distinguished (by way of form, frame) from other
observers or psychic from social observing. ‘We
arrive, then, at the autological conclusion that the observing of
observers and even the operation of self-observation is itself simply
observation in the usual sense – that is, making a distinction to
indicate one side and not the others’[p 86]. And just to be
sure: ‘We resist the temptation to call this creation’ [p
86].
V
‘To elaborate on its self-description remains one of the
possibilities an observer sees and can, if required, actualize. But
even then, it will just change its frame, cross the boundary between
self-reference and hetero-reference; it will mark itself as a thing
among others or as an observer among others. Switching frames,
proceeding from form to form, is the normal way of observing
operations, and the ‘self’ of the system can appear and disappear
as suggested by circumstance’[p 86]. ‘For social systems,
the emergence of organizations that can communicate in their own name
makes all the difference. No other social system can do that, no
society, no societal subsystems, no interaction. If the “estates”
of the old European society wanted to have a voice, they formed a
corporation (“Standschaft” in Germany), and if the economy wants
to have a voice in political affairs, it sends representatives of its
organizations. Nations have names, but to be able to participate in
communication, they form “states”. .. There is
simply no time to include the world or the complete reality of the
observing systems (as “subjects”and as “objects”) in the
operation’[p 87]. If one looks for an all-inclusive statement
one will end up with a paradox: ‘The world is observable because
it is unobservable’ [p 87]. Observation requires distinction,
but the operation to distinguish is itself indistinguishable; it can
be distinguished, but by another operation: ’It crosses the
boundary between the unmarked and the marked space, a boundary that
does not exist before and comes into being (if “being” is the
right word) only by crossing it. .. Obviously this makes no sense. It
makes meaning. It makes no common sense; it uses the meaning of
“para-doxon” to transgress the boundaries of common sense to
reflect what it means to use meaning as a medium’ [pp. 87-88].
But paradox has itself two distinctions: 1) it is the unit of
distinction (ceci n’est pas ..) and, but paradox can be unfolded
(by making a rule at each scale and forbid ‘strange loops’) such
that a distinction can be paradoxified and deparadoxified, depending
on conditions of plausibility. But now 2) a distinction exists
between the paradox and its unfolding, depending on those conditions.
Only the paradox itself is unconditional.
VI
We must distinguish observers, namely society and the encompassing
social system: ‘Society produces culture – memory – and its
culture will decide whether distinctions and indications may be
communicated as natural (not artificial), as normal (not
pathological), and as necessary or impossible (not contingent). In
periods of semantic uncertainty and structural transition, paradoxes
will become fashionable, ..’ [pp. 88-89]. Society in this day
and age, now globalized, is in a similar situation of uncertainty and
paradox is again fashionable; two interconnected reasons: 1) the
establishment of a world society with a plurality of cultural
traditions and 2) the structure of modern society is determined by
functional differentiation (no unifying principle) and no longer by
hierarchical stratification. Society appears the same but its
description depends on the functional subsystem describing it
(politics, economics &c): ‘The integration of the system can
be thought of no longer as a process of applying principles but
rather as a reciprocal reduction of te degrees of freedom of its
subsystems’[p 89]. This is a central condition of modern
society and everything that does not comply with this central idea,
namely that adaptation would not be required is not seen as
‘serious’.
VII
Important distinctions in our traditions are 1) between being and
non-being (ontology) and 2) between good and bad (ethics). Ontology
is about substances (individual beings) and essences (generic
entities), visible as ideas; there is no non-being, but there is
imperfection and in cognition there are true and false opinions. The
essence of cognition is its capacity to distinguish. But: ‘Why
don’t we, operating as observers, that is, as systems, start from
the distinction between inside and outside (Herbst 1976, 88)?
Apparently, being is the strong side, the powerful side of this
distinction. It is the “inner side” of the ontological form. You
can operate on the side of being but not on the side of nonbeings.
Only beings have connecting value. .. That is, what would happen if
we permitted the question of what kind of society lends plausibility
to these ontological assumptions?’ [p 90]. Similar questions
can be asked concerning ethics: What is good and what is bad? But
only good actions have connecting capacities, and bad actions are
isolated events or habits. This means that being is good: ‘.. it
is good to distinguish the good from the bad and that ethics itself
is morally good’ [p 91]. The good represents both the positive
side of the distinction and the distinction itself; from a linguistic
perspective this is due to a confusion of levels; in social
communication this presupposes authority; in structural terms this
unfolding of the paradox presupposes a society with center /
periphery differentiation. What is labeled as “modern” here
reacts to the dissolution of all sorts of these premises: ‘Having
to digest these social changes (patterns of organizations becoming
independent of nobility DPB), the social and political semantics has
to change its conceptual frames. But is also – and this is our
point – has to provide new patterns for the unfolding of the
paradoxes inherent in all distinctions that are used for framing
observations and descriptions’[p 91]. ‘The substantial
being and the reasonable good take the place of the paradox’ [p
92]. ‘But the so-called “modern” solution could never
achieve a similar (to the old-European tradition of resolving paradox
with fetishism and disavowal DPB) stability. Its “present time”
became “pregnant with future”, that is, with the unknown and with
the prospect oscillating within the framework of its distinctions –
now described as “ideologies”. There wwere many competing
distinctions, such as scoiety and state, society and community,
individual and collectivity, freedom and institution, progressive and
conservative politics, and, above all, capitalism and socialism, but
in none of the cases did the unity of these distinctions, the
sameness of the opposites, become a problem (Luhmann 1990a, 123-43).
The paradox now becomes resolved as oscillation, that is, as the
still-undetermined future. Supported by a universally accepted “open
future”, these distinctions (and others as well) stand in for the
paradox of any frame used by an observer. If “modernity” relies
on its future for its deparadoxification, it is, and will always
remain, an “incomplete project” (Habermas 1981). The future never
becomes present; it never begins but always moves away when we seem
to approach it. But how long are we to run into troubles with our
present society?’[p 92].
‘We need only ask the question “What is the unity of this
distinction?” to see the paradox. And what prevents us from doing
exactly that? We would have to use the distinction between
paradoxification and deparadoxification of distinctions. We would
have to admit that all distinctions, including this one, can be
reduced to a paradox. In this sense, paradox is an invariant
possibility, and all distinctions are of only temporary and
contingent validity. We can always ask: Who is the observer? And
then, Why do we distinguish him or her? If thre are sufficient
plausible reasons in present-day disciplinary and interdisciplinary
research, systems theory may offer itself as a way out of the paradox
– for the time being’[p 93].
4 Deconstruction
as Second-Order Observing
A ‘deconstruction kit’ can be applied to distinguish (make a
distinction) between homosexual and heterosexual, namely by
deconstructing the distinction. In so doing the presupposition of a
hierarchical opposition, namely an inherent or natural primacy of
heterosexuality by way of ‘l’englobement du contraire’ is seen,
destroyed. But this abolishing of prejudices is for illustrative
purposes only: ‘Deconstruction draws attention to the fact that
differences are only distinctions and change their use value when we
use them at different times and in different contexts’ [p 95].
But what if we asked the question: Who (which system) is the
observer? What does she invest in making this distinction? What will
she lose in maintaining it? [p 95]. DPB I associate this idea / these
questions with the idea that firms can be owned, or rather, that
business processes can be owned and that the ownership can be listed
on a stock exchange and traded accordingly. Perhaps these questions
are also relevant for (from the perspective of) the other systems
(people) associated with firms: employee, banker, manager, even
customer and supplier: What is their assumption about ownership. And
also: What is their distinction? I reckon this association stems from
the similarity of questioning: Whois the observer, What does she
invest, What might she lose in maintaining this ownership? ‘The
illusion to be deconstructed is the assumption that all these
systems designate the same object when they use the distinction
heterosexuals/homosexuals’[p 95]. And with regards to the
ownership and in the same vein: Deconstruction of the assumption that
all involved systems designate the same object when they use the
distinction owner/nonowner. Observing the individual observers shows
that they are not observing the same thing: each operates in its own
network and each has a different past and a different future. ‘..,a
second-order observer observer observing these observers would only
see loose couplings and lack of complete integration’ [p 95].
In the context of the above question the human body is important
because it decides to be attracted or not; observing this observer
leads to the question if it follows cultural imperatives or if there
is a lack of self-control in play ‘.. or whether there is
an unavoidable akrasia (lack of self-control), .. , a lack of
‘potestas in se ipsum’ (self-control) in humans and in social
systems’ [p 95]. Given akrasia can a soldier know how his body
will observe a situation including homosexuals and where privacy is
limited? Does the body make the same observation as the mind? And can
a potential difference between these observations implicate a male
soldier as a homosexual? If so the whole definition of the problem
changes: akrasia was originally a distinction made at the discretion
of an observer installed by God to oversee His creation using reason
(as opposed to passions). ‘Deconstruction destroys this “one
observer – one nature – one world” assumption. Identities, then,
have to be constructed. But by whom? The problem.. is the
problem of how to protect the fragile and eventually self-deceiving
constructions of individuals; it is the risk (not untypical for
soldiers anyway) of wearing badly fitting garments’ [p 96].
I
‘Deconstruction seems to recommend the reading of forms as
differences, to look at distinctions without the hope of regaining
unity a a higher (or later) level, or without even assuming the
position of an “interpretant”in the sense of Peirce’[p 97].
But are there any framings that are not themselves deconstructible:
‘Or would applying deconstruction lead only to reflexivity,
recursivity, and self-reference resulting in stable meanings,
objects, or what mathematicians call eigenvalues? It seems that there
is only différence’ [p 97]. ‘Deconstruction, then, is
deconstruction of the “is”and the “is not”. Deconstruction
deconstructs the assumption of presence, of any stable
relation between presence and absence, or even of the very
distinction between presence and absence’[p 97]. ‘It may
be sufficient to for maintaining the dance to be aware of the “trace
de l’effacement de la trace” (“trace of the erasure of the
trace”)’ [p 98]. ‘In other words, any kind of observing
system, whatever its material reality (be it biological or
neurophysiological or psychological or sociological), can be
described as determined by the distinctions it uses. In the case of
autopoietic (that is, self-reproducing) systems, this would mean that
an observer has to focus on the self-determined and self-determining
distinctions a system uses to frame its own observations’ [p
99]. What are the distinctions that guide the observations of an
observer and do stable objects appear when these observations are
recursively applied to their own results?: ‘Objects are
therefore nothing but the eigenbehaviors
of observing systems that result from using and reusing their
previous distinctions’ [p 99]. Another tool is transjunction:
these are neither conjunctions or disjunctions but distinctions at a
higher level. If a distinction is found then the corresponding frame
can be accepted or rejected. The entire form may be rejected and
replaced by another (e.g. a moral code can be replaced by a legal
code of good and bad).
II
‘A famous dictum of Humberto Maturana (in the context of his
biological theory of cognition) says: Everything that is said
(including this proposition) is said by the observer’. The Derridan
interpretation of Joseph Margolis leads to a very similar result:
“Everything we say … is and cannot but be desconstructive and
deconstructible.” For language use itself is the choice of a system
that leaves something unsaid. Or, as Spencer Brown would say, drawing
a distinction severs an unmarked space to construct a form with a
marked and unmarked side. It may go too far to say that
language use as such is deconstructive. But
observing and observer uses language certainly is. .. At the level of
second-order observing, everything becomes contingent, including the
second-order observing itself’ [p 100]. But what is gained by
the transition from deconstruction to second-order observing? 1)
Observations break symmetry: distinctions are forms>forms are
boundaries>boundaries separate inside and outside> the inner
side is the marked side (the indicated, having a connective
value)>next operation. In the inner side lies the problem of
finding a next suitable operation. Observations have to presuppose
both sides of the form they use as a distinction or frame; they can
only operate within the world:
‘This means that
something always has to be left unsaid, thereby providing a position
from which to deconstruct what has been said’
[p 101]
. 2) If one tries to see two sides of the distinction at the
same time then one sees a paradox, an entity without connective
value: ‘The different
is the same, the same is different. So what? First of all, this means
that all knowledge and all action have to be founded on paradoxes and
not on principles; on the self-referential unity of the positive and
the negative – that is, on an ontologically unqualifiable world.
And if one splits the world into two marked and unmarked parts to be
able to observe something, its unity becomes unobservable. The
paradox is the visible indicator of invisibility. And since it
represents the unity of the distinction required for the operation
called observation, the operation itself remains invisible – for
itself and for the time being’
[p 101]
. DPB: this reminds
me of the different properties of systems at their component level
and on the level of the whole; it reminds also of the nestedness of
a/p system, although I am not sure why it reminds me of it (could it
be the domains of interactions eigher at the level of the components
or of the domain of the interactions of the whole, but not both
domains at the same time); lastly it reminds me of the narrative of
the hubbub and respective chanting USA! in a football stadium. To
unfold a paradox is to replace it with stable identities by way of
finding distinctions that protect from identifying what cannot be
identified. But
distinctions become visible when one tries to observe their unity:
‘Unfoldments, then,
are the result of unasking this question. This means that one has to
observe the observer to see when and why he takes the risk of an
unfoldment – of a deconstructible unfoldment’[p
102]. 3) The distinction between a paradox and its unfoldment is
itself a paradox: ‘Given
this dead end, only time can help. Time can teach us that there is no
end; everything goes on, and systems continue
to operate as long as they are not destroyed’
[p 102]
. 4) With regards to empirical systems, problems of identity
and stability are “temporalized” and theories of structural
stability are replaced with theories of dynamical stability. ‘But
contrary to a hidden assumption of structuralism, the only component
of a system that can change is its structure. So if we focus on the
form (=distinction), what is the other side of this form? On
the other side we find events or the operations of the system. Events
(and this includes operations) cannot change because they have no
time for change: they disappear as soon as they appear, they vanish
in the very process of emerging. So again, one of these cheerful
paradoxes: the only unchangeable components of systems are inherently
unstable’ [p 103].
And as a consequence systems have to use their operations in order to
be able to use their operations &c; this is roughly what is
called autopoiesis; a/p systems are the products of their
operations; they are unreliable machines, distinguished from trivial
machines that use fixed programs to transform inputs to outputs. 5)
‘A system that can
observe may have the capacity to observe itself. To observe itself it
has to distinguish itself from everything else, that is, from its
environment. The recursively interconnected operations of the system
draw a boundary and thereby differentiate system and environment. The
operation of self-observation requires a reentry (in Spencer Brown’s
sense) of this difference into itself, namely the operation of
distinguishing system and environment within the
system.
.. But a reentry is a paradoxical operation. The distinction between
“before”and “after”the reentry is the same and not the same.
This shows that time (that is the temporal distinction of an observer
is used to dissolve the paradox’
[pp. 103-4]
. Theories of
the mind and theories of society must be based on this paradox
unfolded.
III
Who is the observer? Using
second-level observation, the question becomes: Who is to be observed
by whom and for what reasons? ‘This
means: an observer has to declare (or even justify) his preferences
for choosing and indicating a specific observer to be observed –
that one and not another one’[p
104]. If the second-level observer rejects the choice of the observed
observer, then he makes a transjunctional operation to use
third-level observation to describe the second-level observer with
specific preferences for selecting specific observers (e.g. a family
therapist observing the mutual observations of the family members).
‘There is, in other
words, no logical, ontological, or even natural primacy involved in
using the distinction being/nonbeing’
[p 105]
. This selection of
observing systems is doable for sociologists, the societal system
being the most important observer to observe. For conscious systems
it is less doable because the selection of one over another (of 5bn)
is difficult. Other societal systems such as science are mere
societal subsystems. Most important is how modern society observes
and describes itself and its environment. Some
theoretical preparations: 1) ‘Observation
is nothing but making a distinction to indicate one side and not the
other, regardless of the material basis of the operation that does
the job, and regardless of the boundaries that close the system(
brain, mind, social system) so that it becomes an autopoietic system,
reproduced by the network of its own operations, and eventually
irritated but never determined by its environment’[p
105] 2) The concept of society: ‘Conceived
as an observing system, society cannot be described as a collection
of different, somehow interrelated items, .. . We can think of
society as the all-encompassing system of communication with clear,
self-drawn boundaries that includes all connectable communication and
exclude everything else.
Hence, the society is a self-reproducing system, based on one, and
only one, highly specific type operation, namely communication. It
excludes other types of operationally closed systems – cells,
neurons, brains, minds’
[p 106]
. This is presupposed in the processes of communication. It is
presupposed in the sense of a necessary environment; the form
of a system is the difference
of that system and environment. Living
systems produce only their own reproduction; in so doing they replace
states of awareness for other. But they can never communicate: ‘For
communication requires the production of an emergent unity that has
the capacity to integrate and disintegrate the internal states of
more than one operationally closed system’
[p 106]
. Without operational closure systems would continually mix up
its operations with those of its environment, internal states with
external states and words with things: ‘It
could not make the (reentering) distinction between self-reference
and hetero-reference’
[p 106]
. It could not match internal and external states, it could
not separate observer from observed: ‘The lack of an
operational access to the environment is a necessary condition for
cognition (emphasis by
the author)’ [p
106].
IV
The system of society (global as
it is) seems to be unable to produce one and only one
self-description. And this
leads to the question of how it can describe itself and its
environment: ‘This
observing and describing is done by the mass media’
[p 107]
. This gives one the impression to be first-order observing,
but in fact it is second-order. Mass media cooperate in producing a
coherent image of the world: ‘We
know this is preselected information, but we do not and we cannot in
everyday life reflect upon and control the selectivity of this
selection’ [p 108].
The selection and presentation by mass media is not a distortion but
a construction of reality. There
is no distinct reality out there – for who would make the
distinctions? – all the distinctions are made by the observer. And
there is no privileged observer. And there is no transcendental
subject. For lack of a
powerful alternative we have to accept
these presentations. But
we can deconstruct the observations of the mass media; and
in order to do so, we replace deconstruction with
making second-order observations, observe
their observing. Mass
media prefer: discontinuity over continuity (because they have to
produce information) / conflict over peace / dissensus over consensus
/ drama over normal life / local interest over global issues /
elements of that need no further explanation because they are
distinctions themselves / bad over good news / good over bad
adverstisement / clear moral distinctions (and a practical hero) /
morality and action. ‘What
has become visible after some centuries of impact of the printing
press and after a hundred and more years of mass media is a much more
complicated, some say hypercomplex,
description of complexity – hypercomplex in the sense that within
the complex system of society there are many competing descriptions
of this complexity. The unity of the complexity becomes unobservable.
Intellectuals occupy themselves and others with describing
description, philosophers become experts on philosophical texts –
and literary criticism takes over, nicknaming “theory” something
that we suppose has been done elsewhere’
[p 109]
.
V
Describing
history presents the unity of the past as a guarantee for the unity
of the present. The past had to be presented as a coherent sequence
of events, ‘a unity
of diversity’ [p
110]. There can be said to
be a focus on the past to create unity within the present [p 110]. To
return to history means to return to diversity: ‘The
common heritage, the canonical texts, the “classics” all require
a new reading’ [p
110]. Deconstruction of
the metaphysical system by philosophers attempts to loosen the
binding forces of tradition and replace unity with diversity; this
uproots historical semantics radically; the transform from one form
of stability to another is a catastrophe. Marx used the concept of
class structures
as a correlate between
social structures and semantics; he constructed a typology of
changing modes of production that generated historical ideologies. We
can enlarge this framework by substituting forms of
differentiation for class.
Now the classical sociology is opened for structural complexity and
we can use systems theory to elaborate on forms of
differentiation:
‘Differentiation
becomes system differentiation; system differentiation becomes a
reentry of system-building within systems, new boundaries within
already bounded systems, forms within forms, observers within
observers’ [p 110].
‘This
is “the world we have lost”, the world of ontological
metaphysics, the world of “being or not being”, the world of the
two-value logic that presupposed one (and only one) observer who
could make up his mind simply by looking at what is the case.
Cognition, but also passion such as love, was a passive reaction to a
reality out there, a “being impressed”, and errors in cognition
or passion could be corrected by reason’
[p 111]
.
5. Identity – What or How?
I
‘It should also be recalled that, at this time, the modern novel
began to give readers the ability to observe what the heroes and
heroines of the novel could not themselves observe, above all, in a
pre-Freudian way, their sexual interests’ [p 113]. DPB: today
this element is relevant to investigate what the characters of the
book would have could have should have done, in other words what
their domain of possible interactions is in an autopoietic sense .
This statement above also reminds of the use of research or
investigative journalism as a function of the mass media. This occurs
at a time when modern society begins to see its break with its
predecessors as irreversible: ‘This demands a distance from
immediately fact-related observations and descriptions, demands a
second level, on which one can observe and describe observations and
description themselves’ [p 113]. Von Foerster calls this
phenomenon second-order cybernetics (understood as a circular network
of knowledge operations), and others have pointed at it
concomitantly. The distinction between the “what” and the “how”
questions points at these different levels of observation. The
character of these levels is not linguistic or logic – to solve a
problem of paradoxality – but empirical: ‘Every observation
designates something and distinguishes it therewith from other
things. What it designates can be another observer. When an
observation observes another observer, it uses a more complex,
two-tracked process of distinction. It must first of all distinguish
the observer from what he observes, and at the same time, it must be
able to distinguish the operation of observing from other operations,
for instance from the mere generation of a difference.
How can an observation do that. Note that we ask, “How?”’
[p 114]
. The answer is that this can be done: 1) by the second-order
observation as a first-order observation in the shape of a simply
executed operation. This operation is not to be understood as an
activity of a subject (‘of a carrier founded upon itself’):
‘Its particularity lies only in the autological
(in the case of an autological word: it
has the property it describes, e.g. the word ‘short’
is a short word DPB) components of its observing, that
is, in its drawing conclusions about itself on the basis of the
activity of its object. To this extent, it itself is that from
which it distinguishes itself’ [p 114]. DPB: the observing
operation is not an activity but a procedure executed based on the
shape of the observer, in that sense it is an autological procedure.
Because the observation is now now immanent to the shape of the
observer and because the observer distinguishes herself from
something else, and hence the observation distinguishes itself from
itself. The observation cannot know everything that it is not but it
is what it is not: ‘It itself, as a second-order observation, is
a first order observation. And “autology” then means
nothing more than the dissolution of this paradox through the
recursive calculation upon itself of its own establishment’ [p
114]. Second-order observation is less than first-order observation
because it only observes observers. It is also more because over and
above the observer it is observing, it sees what its object sees. In
that sense it sees what it does not see, and it sees that it does not
see what it does not see &c: ‘On the level of second-order
observation, one can thus see everything: what the observed observer
sees, and what the observed observer does not see. Second-order
observation conveys a universal access to the world. The world
thus becomes the imaginary metaworld of all worlds that form
themselves when systems distinguish system from environment’ [p
115]. But: ‘Only one thing is necessarily excluded: the
observation that is actualized in the very moment of observing, its
functioning as a first-order observation. For the distinction
necessary for every observation cannot distinguish itself in the very
moment of its use (for then another distinction would be necessary.
.. For every observer, the unity of the distinction he uses for the
designation of the one (and not the other) side serves as a blind
spot, for the first-order observer as well as for the second-order
observer. For is is exactly the meaning of this drawing of
distinctions that it is foundational as difference and not as unity’[
p115]. An observer because of how she is shaped has a blind spot
produced by how she designates as a consequence of her distinguishing
of the one (and not the other).
II
Ontology is further to be the form of observing and describing to
distinguish between being and nonbeing, and hence not a metaphysical
understanding of it nor one that cannot be transcended, but used in a
meta-ontological sense: ‘general .. rules of the use of form
apply to the ontological manner of observation. .. Rather form
is the marking of a difference [Differenz] with the help of a
distinction that compels one to designate one or the other side, in
our case, either the being or the nonbeing of something’ [p
115]. According to Spencer Brown the concept of form does not
presuppose a negative; it has an inside and an outside: ‘That
from which being distinguishes itself is the outside of the form,
namely that which is left over from the “unmarked state” when
the caesura of the form is posited. The inside of the form, that is,
being or the positive value, designates the possibility of attaching
further observation and description. The outside is the side from
which the form is reflected, the contingency of he other side is
perceived, and the conditions of connectability can be established’
[p 116]
. The concept of form designates a border that must be crossed
to get from one side of the distinction to the other; to be able to
cross one must give a designation to the other side of the
distinction, and thereby the “unmarked state” becomes “nonbeing”:
‘But, thereby, the distinction being/nonbeing becomes itself
specifiable. Being becomes applicable as a concept. Out of being(hooked upperline
intended designating inside and outside) arises being.nonbeing
(hooked upperline intended idem). .. Crossing
the border implies an operation. An operation requires time, for,
even though both sides are simultaneously given, one cannot operate
on both sides at the same time, for that would mean not using the
distinction as a distinction. The form thus represents a paradoxical
(and in exactly this sense realistic) temporal relation, namely the
simultaneity of the before and after in a time that anticipates
further befores and afters’
[p 116]. This
conception of form leads to a more fundamental (and less artificial)
position for time in logic: ‘Interpreted
as an instrument of observation, this concept of form leads to a
theory into which time (and by way of time, system formation) is
built in foundationally and does not have to be added retroactively
(as in our tradition through the form of motion in contrast to the
unmoved’ [p 117].
DPB: this explains at a more fundamental level how time is not a
driving force, but a result from the dynamical nature of systems
interacting, namely in the sense of observing one another. ‘
.. the form is settled .. on both sides. On the case of ontology, it
is not a form of being, but a form being/nonbeing. Thus it does not
vanish when one crosses the border (for one can always return). It
would disappear only if we were to erase the marking of the border,
but that would reproduce the “unmarked state” in which one can
observe nothing’[p
117].
III
The question addressed in this
lecture is sociological, namely how modern society can observe and
describe itself; one answer is that it can not be an ontology, a
special kind of thing. The
root of the problem is in the observing of the observers and not in
the plurality of the subjects that can be aggregated into a unit.
‘However, when one
observer observes what another
observer establishes as identical, he can take the liberty of
identifying otherwise; of using other distinctions; of interpreting
based on other, contrary concepts; in other words, of treating the
same as not the same. .. The
problem is rather that one can observe an observer only when one
allows what the other sees to be given to one by the other.
Otherwise, two different first-order observers would simply be
looking into the world side by side’
[p 119]
. DPB I really like this above statement: it paints
the picture of observing observers and what they are observing very
clearly. And in addition
it seems to be a foundational choice for a society where people are
required to understand other people: ‘Society
as a whole then operates as a system that can see that it cannot see
what it cannot see’
[p 119]
.
IV
Identity (what is
identical=expressing an identity) is not presupposed and the question
can be asked how identity is produced and what the consequences are
of this manner of production: ‘This
question aims at a genetic theory of the constitution of meaning. If
it can be answered, one will gain access thereby to the phenomenal
complexity of the world. .. The genetic perspective is marked by the
form in which the question is posed. We do not ask what something
identical is, but how something is generated that, as identical,
grounds observation. With this, the concept of identity shifts in the
direction that is today designated as “constructivist”’
[p 119]
. Not the form in
which it exists is the crux, but the design of its production as a
result of the synthesis of externally originated impressions that –
for exactly that reason – cannot be identified. DPB: this reminds
of the way monads exist as an identity. ‘Finally,
in the context of a theory of autopoietic systems, the concept of
identity designates only the form that secures the continuing of the
sequence of operations in a system; to be exact, it secures them
through the distinction identical/nonidentical’
[p 120]
. DPB: identity is a property of thát organization that
maintains autopoiesis, and not another. Observation
is designating of one side of a distinction, but this does not (yet)
make clear what it is that is supposed to be identical: ‘An
identification is first required when the operation is to be
repeated, hence when a system is formed that reproduces itself in the
linkage of operation to operation’
[p 120]
. DPB: this reminds of the concept of individuation of
Deleuze, see thesis Weaver. There
is a lengthy example of someone greeting twice in a row, a repetition
and hence an identity. This can be narrated for instance as a
greeting unnoticed and performed again, but also as the second
greeting to be a confirmation of the first: ‘It
is not simply another, a further greeting. It is a second greeting as
second to the first greeting, a first and
second greeting. An
identity is formed that is compatible with different situations and
that therefore designates a certain playing field of possibilities’
[p 120]
. This explains the
genesis of meaning: a core of meaning arises and ‘a
horizon of reference to other possibilities’
[p 120]
. A difference now has come into existence between actuality
and possibility, ‘..,
which we see as the constitutive difference of the medium that is
meaning’ [p 120].
‘The observation of
the generation of meaning, the observation of repeating, condensing,
and confirming, is always a second-order observation, even when it is
for its part repetitively condensed and confirmed and concomitantly
forms autological concepts adequate to its end’
[p 121]
. DPB
as per Luhmann: observe only its own condition. ‘If
one grasps meaning in this manner as the unity of distinction,
whether it is the distinction between condensation and confirmation
or the distinction between actuality and non-actuality (virtuality),
it makes no sense to designate meaningfully in turn that from which
these distinctions
are distinguished.
The reference for this goes missing. To
that extent, meaning is a concept without difference’
[p 121]
.
V
Nonbeing
is the title given to the unmarked state left over when being is
distinguished. Ontologically with this distinction the impression is
given that something distinguishable is on the other side: ‘However,
this cannot be presupposed if one wounds the world with a first
distinction’
[p 122]
. This would imply the use of the principle of the excluded
middle, an item of classical logic, and one can no longer be capable
of distinguishing the distinction of ontology, ‘..
and one explicates, without seeing other possibilities, an
ontological metaphysics’
[p 122]
. Now it is demanded that there be a distinction between
“unmarked state” and “nothing”; we can address this problem
with a further distinction: ‘When
one starts with being and crosses the border and returns, it is a
though one had never dome so. One stands again at the starting point.
Spencer Brown names this axiom “the law of crossing” and the
corresponding form “cancellation”. .. But
what happens when one (temporarily! – everything is temporary) does
not return but rather remains on the other side and wishes to operate
from there? In this case, the other side becomes “nonbeing”, and
from there one can observe the contingencies of being’ [p
123].
VI
A
transition from an ontological construction of the world to a
constructivist one implies a transition from a strictly bivalent
logic to a calculus of processing distinctions (forms); but
the transition cannot be called progress or superior
[p 123]
. One
of the structural characteristics of modern society is functional
differentiation. Binary
codes allow operations using them to be ascribed to such systems ‘as
a procedure of recognition [Erkenningsverfahren], as a condition of
self-identification, as a condition of the autopoietic operation of
he relevant systems themselves’
[p 124]
. Some examples are: good grades/bad grades, loved/not loved,
dominant/subject &c. These codes cannot be made to be congruent
in the sense that one side is always the positive one (the sick are
powerless, poor, losing &c.). ‘The
differentiation of functional systems instead presupposes that these
codes, independently of one another, fulfill functions that direct
operations, and that it is also impossible to integrate them through
a supercode, for instance through the code of morality’
[p 124]
. DPB: this reminds me of the model for the coherence of
memeplexes. Morality
functions as one code among many, and, equal to the other codes, it
cannot be coupled to the other codes as a moral qualification. ‘If
one wishes to describe a society that describes its world and itself
according to these conditions, one must choose polycontextural forms.
What that specifically means has not yet been clarified, despite
efforts of Gotthard Günther. In any case, one can quickly see that
the individual values of the codes neither join together nor allow
themselves to be expanded into multivalent codes. One is aware that
all efforts toward a transitive, or otherwise ordered, architecture
of values have failed. It is conceivable that, for the purposes of an
analysis of the whole of society, one could assign transjunctive
operations to every code, operations with which the code accepts
itself and rejects all others’
[p 125]
. DPB: this reminds a lot of the connotations that ‘glue
together’ the memes into memeplexes, especially
in relation toe the recognition mentioned above.
‘Society is an
operationally closed, autonomous system of communication.
Consequently everything it observes and describes (everything that is
communicated about) is self-referentially observed and described.
That holds for the description of the societal system itself, and it
holds with the same necessity for the description of the environment
of the societal system. The self-descriptions and the
hetero-descriptions are self-referential descriptions. Consequently,
every description of the world made in the autonomous system
designates self-reference as the point of convergence between
self-reference and hetero-reference – and remains unsayable’
[p 125]
. ‘However,
modern society reproduces this problem in many ways, namely for each
of its operatively closed functional systems .. In this situation,
the paradox of drawing a distinction takes the place of the
conclusive thought that testifies to unity. One gains thereby not a
“solution to the problem” but rather a more precise understanding
of the fact that the solution to the paradox can employ various
distinctions and thus diversify the problem’
[p 126]
.
VII
‘For
all system operations, as undisputed research into the logic of
self-organization has shown, are possible always only as conditioned
operations. And human beings are socialized though participation in
social communication to such a degree that they can choose only from
within the framework of possibilities that have been made accessible
for this choice. If one looks at individuals, any notion of choosing
at will disappears. The rule of second-order observation then runs:
observe the conditionings by which they distinguish and designate.
And if one is not satisfied with observing these individuals –
which from among five billion? – and instead wishes to observe modern
society, this rule again holds: observe the conditionings by which it
distinguishes and designates’
[p 127]
.
6 The Cognitive Program of Constructivism and the Reality That
Remains Unknown
I
Epistemological
questions involve cognition concerning empirical research. Cognitive
instruments are acquired via the researched object by means of those
same instruments. Brains are not able to maintain contact with the
outer world, but instead operate closed in upon themselves: ‘How
does one come, then, from one brain to another?’
[p 128]
. The
classical view was that all knowledge was founded on convention or
that it was the result of negotiation, but that attempt points at the
problem of the unity of knowledge and reality and hence this approach
does not solve the problem. This approach is (radical) constructivism
(Constructivism:
a philosophy maintaining that science consists
of mental constructs created as the result of measuring the natural
world. Social constructivism: knowledge
is constructed in social interactions, human development is socially
situated DPB)
But Plato already refers to everyday experience as opinion and asks
what the reality behind it is. Arriving in the modern times, modern
science led to ‘the
conclusion that this “underlying” reality was knowledge itself’[
p129]. This concept of the subject is constructivism. ‘There
is an external world – which results from the fact that cognition,
as a self-operated operation, can be carried out at all – but we
have no direct contact with it. Cognition could not reach the
external world without cognition. In other words, cognition is a
self-referential process. Knowledge can know only itself, although it
can – as if out of the corner of its eye – determine that this is
possible only if there is more than mere cognition. Cognition deals
with an external world that remains unknown and, as a result, has to
come to see that it cannot see what it cannot see’
[p 129]
. DPB: the big surprise is that this is such a surprise; all
people (or organisms in general) are capable of is to utter noises.
And then these noises can be recognized by others. But the subject,
that incited the generating of the noises, remains largely in the
dark for both the noises utterer and the utteree. Happily NL
continues with ‘So
far there is nothing new here ..’;
nothing
much new if constructivism is only about the unknowability of
reality.
II
Concerning
the knowability of reality, the question can be asked: ‘By
means of what distinction is the problem articulated?’
[p 130]
; to recognize knowing it is necessary to distinguish it from
what is not knowing (the concept of distinction is in this way
radicalized). Now
the search has transformed into an operation for making distinctions,
and: ‘It
is, further, easy to recognize that circularity and paradoxes can no
longer be rejected but will come to play a role’
[p 130]
. DB: this appears to be an important plus, but why
concretely? Is it a crucial connection with complex systems /
behavior, systems theory in general, a likely property of reality, a
new kind of logic? The question above reformulated is: ‘By
means of what distinction is the problem of knowledge articulated?’
[p 130]
. It is not fruitful to approach constructivism starting from
the controversy whether the system is a subject or an object: 1)
the subjectivist approach was “intersubjectivity”, namely to view
the world of others through a process of introspection 2) the
objectivist approach was to describe knowledge as a condition or
process in an object (often an organism). Neither solves the problem:
1) is just a word, 2) it is impossible to describe an object
completely: ‘In
order to avoid these problems, which arise from the point of
departure taken, both subjectivist and objectivist theories of
knowledge have to be replaced by the system/environment distinction,
which then makes the distinction subject/object irrelevant. With
this we have the distinction central to constructivism: it replaces
the the distinction transcendental/empirical by the distinction
system/environment’
[p 131]
. DPB:
I understand this to mean that the distinction that is central to
constructivism is the same distinction as the one that is the pivot
of the problem of knowledge as per above. ‘What
we call “environment” today had to be conceived of as the state
of being contained and carried (periechon),
and what we call “system” had to be thought of as order according
to a principle. Both of these were already objects of knowledge’
[p 131]
. Kant developed the transcendental/empirical distinction to
avoid a self-referring loop, because the system/environment concepts
were not available when he did. Systems
theory including the above systems/environment distinction is
relevant for all knowledge theory; the relevance often emerging as a
side-effect of other research. ‘It
has been known for some time already that the brain has absolutely no
qualitative and only very slight quantitative contact with the
external world. All stimuli coming from without are coded purely
quantitatively (principle of undifferentiated coding (DPB: the
incoming signal is a ‘wall of sound’, an undifferentiated
multitude of signals for the system to allow through for further
processing, or not, and for whatever reasons); furthermore, their
quantity, as compared with purely internal processing events, plays
but a marginal role. (DPB: how does this relate to the system 1 and
system 2 idea of Kahneman?). Incoming stimuli are also erased in
fractions of a second if they are not stored in internal storage
areas with somewhat larger retention times (short-term memory) – an
event that is more the exception than the rule. With this, even time
is made to serve the internal economy of complex processes. (DPB:
spot-on ouwe!, there is no doubt about this in my mind). Apparently
it is fundamental for the functioning of the brain that selected
information is enclosed and not that it is let through. As if it were
already information (or data) before it motivates the brain to form a
representation. Such knowledge as this was not used by theoretical
epistemology and it is only a formulation in terms of systems theory
that leads to an insight that must seem surprising to
epistemologists: only closed systems can know. The
sociology of science has arrived at similar conclusions (which are
still, for the most part, rejected as being too shocking’
[p132]
. The paradox is that only non-knowing systems an know, only
who cannot see can see. If
a knowing system has no access to the external world it can be denied
that this world exists, but it can also be claimed that the external
world is what it is; this calls into question the distinction
being/nonbeing: ‘Systems
theory suggests instead
the distinction between system and environment’
[p 133]
.
III
Starting
there, then an answer to: How is knowledge possible? begins with: As
the operation of a system separated from its environment. If the
system is also assumed to be operationally closed then assumptions
are added concerning self-reference and recursivity. This kind of
operations are only possible within the context of a network of
operations of the same system: ‘There
is no single operation that can emerge without this recursive
network. At the same time the network is not an operation.
“Multiplicity does not act as a relay” (Serres 1984, 238). The
whole cannot as a whole itself become active. Every operation
reproduces the unity of the system as well as its limits. Every
operation reproduces closure and containment. There is nothing
without an operation – no cognition, either. And every operation
has to fulfill the condition of being one operation among many, since
it cannot exist in any other form, cannot otherwise possibly be an
operation. As
a result, for an observer the system is a paradox (DPB: U-S-A), a
unity that is a unity only as a multiplicity, a unitas
multiplex.
Even when the system observes itself, one has what is true for every
observation (?). If a system wants to know what makes it possible
that it can know, it encounters this paradox’
[p 133]
. Systems
cannot perform operations outside of their limits and if new
operations are integrated then the limits of the system were
extended: ‘Consequently,
the system cannot use its own operations to connect itself with its
environment since this would require that the system operate half
within and half without the system. The function of the boundaries is
not to pave the way out of the system but to secure discontinuity.
Whatever one wants to call cognition, if it is supposed to be an
operation then the operation necessarily has to be one incapable of
contact with the external world, one that, in this sense, acts
blindly’
[p 134]
. Can
what becomes perceptible here be called “knowledge” at all? Let’s
introduce a distinction (the second) between operation and
observation: ‘An
operation that uses distinctions in order to designate something we
will call “observation”. We are caught once again, therefore, in
a circle: the distinction between operation and observation appears
itself as an elemtn of observation. On the one hand, an observation
is itself an operation; on the other hand, it is the employment of a
distinction’
[p 134]
. A corresponding logic must accommodate for the reentering of
the distinction into what is has distinguished (in Spencer Brown’s
“drawing a distinction”, time is employed to resolve
self-referring circles and paradoxes). DPB: this is very common: from
the logistics of parallel interactions in a grid to the way
information travels in a group. ‘An
observation leads to knowledge only insofar as it leads to reusable
results in the system. One can also say: Observation is cognition
insofar as it uses and produces redundancies – with “redundancy”
here meaning limitations of observation that are internal to the
system’
[p 134]
. From
this a passage to constructivism is possible with the insight that:
‘it
is not only for negations that there are no correlates in the
environment of the system but even for distinctions and designations
(therefore for observations)’
[pp. 134-5, emphasis of the author]
. The reality of the outside
world, that an observer can observe that, how a system is influenced
by its environment, how it acts upon the environment, are beyond
doubt. But
all distinctions and designations are internal recursive operations
of the system: all achievements are internal achievements; ‘There
is no information that moves from without to within the system’
[p 135]
. ‘There
can be no doubt, therefore, that the external world exists or that
true contact with it is possible as a necessary condition of the
reality of the operations of the system itself. It is the
differentiation of what exists that is contributed by the observer’s
imagination, since, with the support of the specification of
distinctions, an immensely rich structure of combinations can be
obtained, which then serves the system for decisions about its own
operations’
[p 135]
. And
hence are we getting closer to the idea of associations that store
patterns for later use (and here also introduced the imagination, I
take it to be the “drawing of associations”): ‘Cognition
is neither the copying nor the mapping nor the representation of an
external world in a system. Cognition is the realization of
combinatorial gains on the basis of he differentiation of a system
that is closed off from its environment (but nonetheless contained in
that environment)’
[p 136]
. Knowing systems are real systems in a real world
(real=empirical, observable).
IV
‘Cognitive
systems (at least the brain, consciousness, and the systems of
communications called societies) operate on the basis of events that
have only a momentary presence and that already begin to disappear at
the moment of their emergence. Furthermore, these systems operate on
the basis of events that cannot be repeated but that must be replaced
by other events. Their structures must, therefore, provide for the
passage from event to event – something for which there are no
equivalents in the environment’
[p137]
. Neither
does the environment change with the same tempo and rhythm nor are
the autopoietic structures of systems in the environment somehow
translateable into one another: ‘How
then is the time relation between the system and the environment to
be understood? The answer can only be: as simultaneity’
[p 137]
. DPB: time is associated with the counting of events, then it
is a comparison of the number of events
in the
system and the number of events in the environment.
‘The
foundation for the reality of the system – whatever the contours of
its meaningful observations might be – is the simultaneity of its
operation with the conditions of reality that sustain it’
[p 137]
. Systems’s
distinction between a
nonpresent
past and a nonpresent future contributes
to a present that is simultaneous with the environment. But their
presents are simultaneous, and hence they cannot influence each other
causally, and so they are not sychronized, and yet they are a
precondition for the application of distinctions in time: ‘The
system can place itself in relation to time between future and past,
or as a moment in relation to duration or to eternity. Whatever might
emerge from this, the system constructs time in relation to itself.
What one does not have control over is the simultaneity that
reemerges from moment to moment in all the operations of the system’
[p 137]
. ‘It
is out of the unavoidable certainty of the simultaneity of the system
and the environment that current time projections can arise’
[p 137]
. DPB: this reminds of my Frivolity on Time and also it
reminds of the remark of Weaver of the ‘counting of events’ ,
that I have now come to think of as counting differences in states as
compared to states of the in their simultaneity. Systems can now
based on the patterns in some element of the behavior of their
environments make projection concerning some of its future behavior;
this is not the same as perceiving future present times; in the case
of highly cognitive systems they can now even make prognoses. DPB: on
their various levels of sophistication these systems can anticipate
(draw anticipations of) their futures. ‘Presumably,
prognosis has to be understood as a product of our imagination that
can be evaluated by the memory, that is, as the creation of an excess
of individual possibilities that is then offered up for selection
according to self-constructed criteria of “suitability”. In other
words, systems that make prognoses can prepare themselves for risks
that they themselves have created and derive benefits from this’
[p 138]
. DPB: I find this interesting and possibly even important in
the light of the discussion in my manuscript, EFRE, concerning the
belief, expectations, predictions &c. This sheds some light also
on the freedom of will: the thoughts thought are limited to the ideas
that the thinker has available. Within the range of the combinatorial
production (what word uses NL?) of these thoughts she can make a
selection (the hurdle of which is also driven by ideas imprinted in
social processes). ‘Cognitive
systems, therefore, have only a momentary existence, as a result of
the burden of simultaneity that keeps them on the ground’[p
138]. And then on, with a bang: ‘This
existence must reproduce itself autopietically in order to attain
stability, even if it is only a dynamic (why the only..?) one. They
experience the world, therefore, with future and past – that is, as
duration
– only in the form of nonpresentness.
These systems can, therefore, consider their history to be finished
insofar as they do not makee present – as if in a dream –
retrospective preferences. In the same way their future is full of
enticing and threatening possibilities (although in reality there is
no possibility at all, since everything is as it is)’
[p 138]
. And this is why bureaucracies exist and records and
accounting systems and
banks:
‘It
is possible to keep the nonpresent constant, which yields in turn the
fascinating possibility of cognition’s representing changes
in the external world by terminological constants
instead of by changes in the system itself). As a result, such
systems need records, which can, however, be accessed only currently;
subsequently these systems help themselves with a kind of “vicarious
learning”, with observing observations of others that have the same
limitation. The vast unfolding of he world materially, temporally,
and socially is a construct anchored in the simultaneity of the
world, a world that, in this regard, never changes but is nonetheless
inseparable from every realization’
[p 138]
. On the other hand, the contemporaneous is reduced to an
instant nearly without meaning; this explodes the number of possible
futures; cognition has to find its way in this vastness.
V
This theory of constructivism dissolves the continuum of being and
thinking. It also rejects the theoretical transcendental position
assumed as a reaction towards this dissolution. And it rejects the
possibility of a subjective faculty of consciousness that guarantees
the conditions for cognition. But does not suffice to replace this
idea with distinction between a perturbation from outside vis a
vis a self-determination from inside: ‘What remains (and has to
replace those assumptions) is the recursivity
(emphasis author) of observation and cognition. A process is called
“recursive” when it uses the results of its own operations as the
basis for further operations – that is, what is undertaken is
determined in part by what has occurred in earlier operations’
[p 139]
. In systems theory such a process would be said to use it own
outputs as inputs. Recursivity requires continuous testing of
consistency; in processes of perception and memory of the human brain
this requires a binary representation at the neurological level (Von
Foerster 1969), to cater for rejection and readiness. The states that
have been produced so far by system operations form the criteria for
the acceptation and rejection for further operations; stimuli from
the environment play a part also; decisive, however, is the
continuous self-evaluation of the system by means of a code to permit
acceptance and rejection of future states. DPB: this whole section
reminds a lot of the Oudemans section on the workings of monads
(where I had put it originally); it is in fact rather similar to the
way that I envisioned how recursive systems get from state to state.
I had also connected this idea with the existence of attractors and
repellers, such that seeming intentions are not required. ‘The
brain functions in this way. And the same will be true for psychic
and social systems. The codification true/false gives this
schematization only its final finish and a form that is used only
under very special circumstances’ [p 139]. DPB: I would say at
any one cycle after an external (or internal indirect,
self-inflicted) perturbation has occurred: now the systems has to
sort itself out, and of all the possibilities on its domain, it must
find which will be its next state; this seems to be a sequence of not
this one, not this one not this one but this one: ‘One can,
therefore, think of binarily schematized recursivity as a continuous
calculation of operations on the basis of the current states of the
system. The pleasure/pain mechanism also seems to function in this
manner. With regard to observations, this structure makes
possible the observation of observations. This can mean, first of
all, that one repeats the same operation in order to see whether its
results are confirmed or not confirmed. This leads to a
“condensation” of units of meaning whose verification can no
longer be obtained by a single operation. More or less clear
deviations can be built into such a replication. One observes the
same thing at different times in different situations, under
different aspects, which leads to a further enrichment of the
condensed meaning and finally to the abstraction of denotation for
what seems identical in the different observations. Thus it can
safely be assumed that the meaningful construction of the world comes
about, gaining thereby a power no single operation can possibly
dispose of. One speaks here, in the language of mathematics, of the
“eigenvalues” of a system’[ p 139-40]. DPB: many things
come together here: first there is the subject of the restricting of
the possible future states, then the subject of computation
(calculation) is touched upon and lastly the individuation of the
variations of instances that can come to be seen denotatively as an
abstraction (e.g. a species from the variety of individuals). The
sequence of operations has an element that is invariable such that it
consistently brings about a pattern and hence is invariable and is
hence likened to mathematical eigenvalues. This explains how distance
is bridged by knowledge (Donald Campbell, Egon Brunswik: distal
knowledge): ‘If one takes into consideration the dependence of
all observation on distinction, other possibilities of recursive
observation emerge. .. The usual understanding of the observations of
observation focuses above all on what an
observer observes (distinguishing thereby between subject and
object, but concentrating above all on the object). Constructivism
describes an observation of observation that concentrates on how
the observed observer observes. .., by this means one can also
observe what and how an observer is unable to
observe. In this case one is interested in his blind spot, that is,
the means by which things become visible or nonvisible. One observes
(distinguishes) the distinction used by the primary observer in his
observing. .. In terms of sociology one could also say that
observation is directed now to the observed observer’s latent
structures and functions’ [p 140]. To what invariants will a
system converge when it extends the recursivity of its observations
towards things that other observers cannot observe.
VI
How must paradoxes be treated in a constructivist theory? ‘By a
paradox is meant a permissible and meaningful statement that leads
nontheless to antinomies or undecidability (or, more strictly, a
demonstrablee proposition that has such consequences)’ [p 142].
‘We suggest instead a view from the side, the observing of
observation’ [p 143]. This enables one to observe how other
render their paradoxes invisible: ‘To see what other cannot see
(and to accept that they cannot see what they cannot see) is, in a
way, the systematic keystone of epistemology – taking the place of
its a priori foundation. It is, therefore, of importance that every
observer involves himself in a paradox because he has to found his
observing on a distinction’ [p 143]. As a consequence the
observer cannot see the beginning nor the end of this observation’–
unless it be by means of another distinction that he has already
begun to make or by continuing with a new distinction after having
ended. This is why every projection, every goal, every
formation of an episode necessitates recursive observation and why,
furthermore, recursive observation makes possible not so much the
elimination of paradoxes as their temporal and social distribution
onto different operations’ [p 143]. This remedy can be realized
in the theory of autopoietic systems, where a network of operations
generates a network of operations as per the conditions of its
generation and where there is no operation that has no reference to
other operations. And: ‘A consensual integration of systems of
communication is, given such conditions, something that should sooner
be feared than sought. For such integration can only result in the
paradoxes becoming invisible to all and remaining that way for an
indefinite future. ’ [p 143].
VII
What is the understanding of reality that constructivism has?
Objectivists claim that reality is manifold and no observation can be
made from a single point: what is not observed is hidden behind what
is observed. Subjectivists claim a multiplicity of perspectives each
of which gives a conditional seeing, but disabling the chosen
perspective. ‘Constructivism goes beyond these positions by
radicalizing the relationship between cognition and reality. It is no
longer a question of the difficulties that arise from a multiplicity
of sides or perspectives, and the problem is no longer how one
arrives, given this situation, at unity. This multiplicity,
regardless of whether it is a multiplicity of sides or of
perspectives is itself a product of cognition, resulting from certain
types of distinctions, which, as distinctions, are instruments of
cognition. It is precisely by means of distinguishing that cognition
separates itself from everything that is not cognition. Nonetheless,
one is always dealing with concretely determined operations – even
in the case of knowledge’ [p 144]. All reality must be
constructed (by cognition) and consequently all reality is
constructed, and hence is the constructed reality not the same as the
reality referred to. ‘The source of a distinction’s ability to
guarantee reality lies in its own operative unity. It is,
however, precisely as this unity that the distinction cannot be
observed – except by means of another distinction that then assumes
the function of a guarantor of reality’ [p 145]. ‘Another
way of expressing this is to say that the operation emerges
simultaneously with the world, which as a result remains cognitively
unapproachable to the operation’ [p 145].
VIII
‘One has to postulate instead: Everything issuing from this
process of transformation of limitations into conditions for the
increase of complexity is, for the system in question, knowledge’
[p 146]
. In contrast with idealism constructivism is not fixed on a
ground.
IX
‘With observing, distinguishing, designating, we always mean an
empirical operation that changes the system executing it – which
means an operation that, in its own turn, is observable. No observer
can avoid being observed, not even in its quality as “subject”’
[p 147]
. This is as opposed to a transcendental position. The concept
of observation allows for use in the “cognitive sciences”, such
as the disciplines biology, psychology and sociology (including their
differentiation). ‘Observation takes place when living systems
(cells, immune systems, brain, etc.) discriminate and react to their
own discrimination’. Observation occurs when thoughts that have
been processed through consciousness fix
and distinguish something‘ [p 147]. Now cognition is no longer
a specific property of “man”: ‘.. “constructivism” is a
completely new theory of knowledge, a posthumanistic one. .. the
concept “man” (in the singular!), as a designation for the bearer
and guarantor of the unity of knowledge, must be renounced. The
reality of cognition is to be found in the current operations of the
various autopoietic systems. The unity of a structure of cognition
(or the “system” in the sense of transcendental theory) can lie
only in the unity of an autopoietic system that reproduces itself
with its boundaries, its structures, and its elements’ [p 147].
Luhmann refers to people as psychological systems (of which there are
at the time of writing about 5bn). There is also a communication
system called society. ‘What we know as cognition is the product
of the system of communication called society, where consciousness
plays a permanent but always only fractional role. It is only
in extreme exceptions that one has to know individual persons in
order to know what is known – and these are typical instances (for
example, statements by witnesses in court) in which direct perception
plays a central role’ [p 148]. Knowledge is an artifact of
communication and it is amazing that it is still possible to pursue
communication; this cannot be explained by some faculty of
consciousness, but by the possibilities of storage of data in print
and then digitally. ‘It is, finally, only in a sociological
context that the ideas about recursive observation and second-order
observation (i.e., the observation of observation) acquire their full
significance. But why would an observer observe another
observer as observer, as another psychical system. Why isn’t the
other system seen simply as a normal object in the external world,
that is, why iitn’t it simply observed directly instead of as a
pathway for the observing of its observing?’ [p 149]. Classical
and autopoietic explanations fail to explain the emergence of the
observation of observations, namely how observers construct the
objects they have constructed as other observers. ‘A third
theoretical suggestion (which draws on sociology, since psychology
and biology have not sufficed DPB as per the above arguments)) can
begin with the assumption that the construction of the other observer
is a necessary consequence of communication. For communication is
possible only when an observer is able, in his sphere of perception,
to distinguish between the act of communication and information, that
is, to understand communicative acts as the conveying of information
(and not simply as behavior). Out of this distinction – which
remains stable only evolutionarily and reproduces itself as a
communication system only when it is able to maintain itself –
there emerges then a second one: that of subject and object. That
communication can be continued requires no more than a kind of
black-box concept for the subject and for the object, as far as the
distinction operates’ [pp. 149-50]. For communication there is
no need to know what goes on inside the subject nor is it required to
know the essence of things. Systems of communication grow more
sophisticated and differentiated and complex, other concepts for
subjects and objects are required. In the course of this, the
observer learns to observe others as observers, whether they are
communicating or not, and ‘.. and finally even to observe that
others do not observe what they do not observe when they are
observing. Society, finally makes even latent observations of latent
structures possible’ [p 150]. ‘The answer (to the question
why communication together with its resulting achievement progresses)
can only be that evolutionary force of a particular distinction –
that between communication and information – has proven itself.
This can, of course, be claimed of everything that exists, and it
is still not an explanation. Important, however, In the
constructivist context outlined above, is that this claim has been
made for a distinction. With this, another distinction has been added
to those already used – system/environment and
operation/observation: that of communication/information, which is of
special importance for the analysis for social systems’ [p 150].
X
“It is perhaps not the least important function of
constructivist epistemology to make society irritatingly aware of the
fact that it produces science’ [p 152].
7 What is communication?
We no longer have a knowledge of psychological and social systems
that can be integrated
After hundred years of differentiated research knowledge of
psychology and of sociology can no longer be integrated. Both are
complex and structured systems with nontransparent and nonregulable
internal dynamics. This is not clearly represented in every theory
concerned: in sociology action and communication are not: they
presuppose an author designated as an individual or a subject to whom
action or communication can be attributed: ‘But the concepts of
subject or individual function therein only as empty formulas for a
state of affairs that is in itself highly complex, one that falls
under the domain for which psychology is responsible and does not
further interest sociologists’ [p 155].
Only communication can communicate
‘If one calls this conceptual disposition into question, as I
want to do, one usually hears the following: in the end, it is always
people, individuals, subjects who act or communicate. I would like to
assert in the face of this that only communication can communicate
and that what we understand as “action” can be generated only in
such a network of communication’ [p 156]. This is my landscape
of Jobs, but what is presented here in a very strong way is that
actions can ONLY come from this network. The second element is that
there are interesting developments in the field of general systems
theory concerning self-organization, namely autopoiesis. But this
bears consequences for the organization of scientific research and
levels and their distinctions.
Self-reference is not a special property of thought
Self-reference is the same as “reflection”. It is not specific
for thought or consciousness, but it is a general principle of system
formation, with consequences for evolution and the construction of
complexity. ‘The consequence that there are many ways of
observing the world, according to which system-reference each is
based on, should then be inevitable’ [p 156]. Evolution has
lead up to a world that has many different possibilities to observe
itself, and without any of these observations being better than
another. A theory with the ambition to deal with this must concern
the observation of observations, à la Von Foerster, begging the
question: What does a sociological theory that meets these
requirements look like? The answer starts with the concept of
communication, because that is an unavoidable social operation, not
action. DPB: this reminds me of the Spinoza remark that people would
be better off if they could steer their propensity to talk, but they
can’t refrain from it. ‘In the main part of my lecture,
therefore, would like to attempt to present a corresponding concept
of communication, namely a concept that strictly avoids any
reference to consciousness or to life, that is, to
other levels of the realization of autopoietic systems’ [p
157] (underline DPB). Not that these are not required for
communication to occur, so as are other conditions like bonding of
atoms and the earth’s magnetic field, but to include them over
generalizes the theory.
Communication comes about through a synthesis of three different
selections
Life, consciousness and communication are emergent (self-generated)
realities: ‘It comes about through a synthesis of three
different selections, namely the selection of information
, the selection of the utterance [Mitteilung] of
this information, and selective understanding or
misunderstanding of this utterance and its
information’ [157]. DPB: this reminds me of my model concerning
the exchange of signals. I had processed the utterance in an operator
(E=expression) and the (mis)understanding in an operator
(B=begrip/perception). I find it difficult to distinguish data from
information and I had not included a separate operator for the
selection itself of the information. To establish communication they
have to appear together; this I had, only if signaling and reception
‘connect’ can the emergent ‘thing’ be called an utterance, or
a communication. ‘Only together: that means, only when their
selectivity can be brought to congruence (DPB: a signal is issued and
recognized as a signal?). Communication therefore takes place only
when a difference of utterance and information is first understood’
This distinguishes it from a mere perception of others’ behavior.
By understanding, communication grasps a difference between the
information value of its content and the reasons for which the
content is being uttered. It can thereby accentuate one side or the
other and thus pay more attention to the information itself or to
the expressive behavior’ [p 157]. DPB: This accentuates more
the actual attempt of the communicator to communicate as an operation
per sé. I have integrated communication as a ‘kind of behavior’
that can have an effect on others, whether it is uttered or rather
shown (attitude, body language) and can therefore be conscious to a
larger or to a smaller extent. Selection depends on the experience of
both sides, ‘.. thereby distinguishing them. .. we must
presuppose that the information does not understand itself and that a
particular decision is necessary in order for its utterance’
[pp. 157-8]
.
It is of paramount significance to maintain the distinction between
perception and communication
To maintain this distinction is important because communication
offers ‘rich possibilities for an accompanying perception’
[p 158]
. But perception is a psychological event without
communicative existence: ‘Inside the communicative occurrence it
is not connectable as it is. One can neither confirm nor refute,
neither interrogate nor respond to what another has perceived. .. It
can naturally become an external reason for a subsequent
communication. Participants can bring to into communication
their own perceptions and the interpretations of the situation that
are bound up with them, but only according to the autonomous laws of
the system of communication, for instance, only in the form of
language, only by claiming speaking time, only through imposing
oneself, making oneself visible, exposing oneself – thus only under
discouragingly difficult conditions.’ [p 158]. DPB: here is an
important difference with my view: I do not agree with the idea that
communication can only occur through language. What is important
however, is the idea that there are strong selective forces at play,
namely to inject one’s ideas into the conversation, bringing them
forward, not too far off the mark, within intellectual reach of all
present (or not to look stupid) &c. In an autopoietic system this
is how the discours (my choice of words) orients the new incumbent
arguments (just-so stories).
Even understanding is itself a selection
‘Understanding is never a mere duplication of the utterance in
another consciousness but is, rather, in the system of communication
itself, a precondition for connection onto further communication,
thus a condition of the autopoiesis of the social system’ [p
158]. DPB: this is an element of what I attempt to formalize in the
Logistical Model. It goes on to separate the ‘bubble’ of the
communication from the experience of the individuals participating in
the conversation: ‘Whatever the participants in their own
respective, self-referential, closed consciousnesses may think, the
communication system works out its own
understanding and creates processes of self-observation and
self-inspection for this purpose’ [p 158] (emphasis DPB: thhis
is the first time the communication is a referred to as a system).
The participants cannot communicate as simply as they would like
about understanding and misunderstanding
‘It is possible to communicate about understanding and
misunderstanding or lack of understanding – though again only under
the highly specific conditions of the autopoiesis of the system of
communication and not as easily as the participants would like. The
utterance “You don’t understand me” therefore remains
ambivalent and, at the same time, communicates this ambivalence’
[p 159]
. It means: 1) You are not ready for what I am trying to tell
you, 2) communication cannot be continued with this lack of
understanding and 3) it is the continuation of the communication.
DPB: the autopoiesis of the communication system requires that the
interaction remains on the domain of interactions of the system. If a
participant goes outside of the domain of possible interactions of
the communication system then its integrity is at stake and the
system can refuse to ‘goe there’ or perish. The technique to deal
with these situations is a sequence of questions and answers to
clarify the communication.
What is new about this concept of communication?
1) the distinction into three components
2) ‘In light of this, a systems-theoretical approach emphasizes
the emergence of communication itself. Nothing
is transferred. Redundancy is produced in the sense that
communication generates a memory to which many people can lay claim
in many different ways. (DPB: haha! My point of view exactly!) If A
utters something to B, the subsequent communication can be addressed
to A or B. The system pulsates, so to speak, with the constant
generation of excess and selection’ [p 160]. And the connection
with stigmergy: ‘With the emergence of writing and printing,
this process of system formation is once more immensely heightened,
with consequences for social structure, semantics, indeed for
language itself, consequences that are only now gradually entering
the view of researchers’ [p 160].
With these three components, it is a matter of different selections
These three components of information, utterance and understanding
are not functions or acts, or building blocks, but rather different
selections, ‘.. whose selectivity and field of selection (DPB:
what is this?) can be constituted only through communication. There
is no information outside communication; there is no utterance
outside of communication; there is no understanding outside of
communication. This is so .. in the circular sense of mutual
presupposition’ [p 160].
A system of communication is a completely closed system
‘A system of communication is therefore a fully closed system
that generates the components of which it consists though
communication itself. In this sense, a system of communication is an
autopoietic system that produces and reproduces through the system
everything that functions for the system as a unit. .. Formulated
more concretely, this means that the system of communication itself
specifies not only its own elements – what in each case is a unit
of communication that cannot be further divided – but
also is structures. What is not communicated cannot contribute to
this’ [p 160-1]. And communication is interrupted when:
‘Sometime, and rather quickly, the useful limit of communication
is reached or patience – that, the load-bearing capacity of the
psychological environment – is exhausted, or the interest in other
themes or other partners prevails’ [p 161].
Communication has no goal
‘Communication has no goal [Zweck], no immanent entelechy. It
happens, or not, and that is all that one can say on that point’ [p
161]. DPB: this reminds me of the just-so stories. Luhmann refers to
the ‘theoretical style of Spinoza’. Goal-oriented episodes can be
formed in systems of communication, but to reach those goals is not
their goal.
The theory of the rationality of communicative action is simply false
on empirical grounds alone
‘Often, it is more or less implicitly supposed that
communication aims at consensus, that it seeks agreement’ [p
162]. DPB: But this is an element in a widespread misunderstanding
that systems should find some kind of equilibrium (to have an
equilibrium is good), but: the fact that the body hangs still does
not imply that the man is alright. ‘What it necessarily requires
is one’s being able to leave aside the question of consensus or
dissent in relation to themes that are not present at the moment’
[p 162]
.
All communication is risky
Instead of an equilibrium oriented entelechy, systems theory states
the thesis that: ‘Communication leads to the precise formulation
of the question of whether the uttered and understood information
should be accepted or rejected. One believes a piece of news
or not. Communication creates at first only this alternative and
thereby creates the risk of rejection. It forces a situation of
decision that would not exist at all without communication. To this
extent, all communication is risky. This risk is one of the most
important morphogenetic (my emphasis) factors.
It leads to the building of institutions that secure a disposition of
acceptance even toward improbable communications’ [p 162]. DPB:
the morphogenesis points at the process of unfolding following some
design to arrive at some final shape. What this says is that the risk
one experiences in communication (the information being true or
false) is a source for morphogenesis: it shapes the process of
becoming of the communication system. In addition, or perhaps rather,
this risk leads to te development of institutions that are inclusive
for communications, even when the risk that they are untrue is high.
This reminds me of the question of reputation: people showing a very
emotional reaction if their reputation is called into doubt and hence
they are perceived as very reliable. Can this risk also be secured by
institutions insetad of the reputations of people?
Communication duplicates reality
‘It creates two versions: a yes-version and a no-version., and
thereby compels selection. .. The precise formulation of the
alternatives of acceptance or rejection is thus nothing but the
autopoiesis of communication itself’ [p 163]. Each statement in
this way is a connecting element in the communication: either it
attains consensus or dissent, or else it can pursue to conceal the
problem and to try and avoid it.
The value-reference of communications
‘What one can observe empirically is, at first glance, that
values are brought into communication by implication. One presupposes
them already. One alludes to them’ [p 163].
One discusses not values but only preferences
‘Consequently, values are supposed to be valid because they are
presupposed to be valid. He person who communicates with reference to
values lays claim to a sort of values bonus. The other has to
announce him- or herself if he or she does not agree. .. He or she
has the burden of the argumentation. He or she runs the risk of
thinking innovatively and having to isolate him- or herself. And
since more and more values are implied than can be thematized in the
nextstep, picking out, rejecting, or modifying is an almost hopeless
task. One does not discuss values, only preferences, interests,
prescriptions, programs’ [p 164]. This is not the same thing as
a value system and it does not imply that there is a stable
psychologically stable structure, quite the contrary in fact, because
values have a labile existence: ‘Their stability, as I would
like to formulate it provocatively, is an exclusively communicative
artifact, and the autopoietic system of consciousness uses this
artifact as it pleases’ [p 164]. DPB: I think this means that
the values are a product of the communication system that has the
shape of an autopoietic, and a complex system. The patterns produced
by the system are perceived by its participants: ‘Exactly
because structures of the autopoiesis of the social system are at
play here, the semantics of values is suitable for the representation
of the foundations of the social system for one’s own use. Their
stability rests on a recursive supposition of the act of supposing
and on a testing of the semantics with which it this either functions
or does not function. The “foundation of validity” is
recursivity, hardened through the communicative disadvantaging of
contradiction’ [p 164]. DPB: 1) the individual (psychological)
and the system (social) are made of the same stuff! 2) these
selective processes (hardening) are the engine for the individuation
of the social system (and I guess also for the ideas ‘ripening’
in the brain of the individual associated with the system).
There is no self-realization of values
‘What consciousness thinks of this is a completely different
question. If it is well-versed, it will know that value consensus is
as inevitable as it is harmful (DPB: sic! (parasitic)). For there is
no self-realization of values, and one can allow everything that they
seem to demand to go astray in their realization – in the name of
values, naturally’ [p 164].
Consequences for the field of the diagnosis and therapy of system
relations
1) Psychological systems operate with consciousness, social systems
with communication; both are circularly closed each applying its
autopoietic reproduction. A social system cannot think (what about
computation, individuation, thinking?) and a psychological system
cannot communicate. Closure means not that they are not causal, and
not that their relations cannot be observed; the systems are opaque
to each other and cannot steer each other. 2) ‘.. consciousness
contributes only noise, interference, and disturbance to
communication. and vice versa’ [p 165]. When you observe a
process of communication you must know what went before to understand
it, but in general terms you do not need the structure of the
participants’ consciousnesses.
One’s own consciousness dances about upon the words like a
will-o’-the-wisp
Social and psychological systems are interdependent. Psychological
selectivity differs from social selectivity in the sense that one can
or does usually not say exactly what one thinks for serious and
frivolous reasons: hence the dancing about &c. Consciousness is
superior to communication, because it deals not only with words and
sentences, ‘.. but additionally and often more importantly with
perception and with the imaginative constructions and dismantlings of
images’ [p 166]. The capability to balance between observation
and concentration on what has to be spoken while one speaks varies
from person to person.
It is inevitable to adapt communication to the will-o’the-wisp of
consciousness
‘Changing the system-reference and coming back to the social
system of communication, all of this makes it inevitable that
communication will be adapted to the will-o’the-wisp of
consciousness. Of course, communication cannot transport bits of
consciousness. Rather, consciousness, no matter what it thinks to
itself, is maneuvered by communication into a situation of forced
choice – or so it appears at least from the point of view of
communication. Communication can be accepted or rejected in a
way that is communicatively comprehensible..’ [p 167].
Communication can be interfered with by consciousness
–
8 How can the mind participate in communication?
I
‘Within the communication system we call society, it is
conventional to assume that humans can communicate’ [p 169]. DPB:
it is the societal systems that leads us to conventionally believe
that, or, the societal system allows people to think that and does
not oppose the thought. It is false and it functions only as a
convention and in communication: ‘The convention is necessary
because communication necessarily addresses its operations to those
who are required to continue communication’ [p 169]. DPB: this
reminds me of the statement of Spinoza that people have an urge to
talk and they would be better off keeping silent sometimes. They have
to believe that they can communicate and then they believe they have
to do it incessantly, but: ‘Only communication can communicate’
[p 169]
. It is unknown at this point how the mind can effect physical
behavior or even communication): ‘We have to start any
clarification with the observer’[p 169]; the questions to ask
are: Whether and how does the mind participate in communication? It
does participate, because without it there could be no communication
just as without a molecular organization of matter there could be no
life, but how? Humans are built of operationally closed
(autopoietically organized) subsystems, such as cells. ‘The
brain can be stimulated by an extremely small amount of external
impulses, but only internal changes are available for its own
operations, and it cannot initiate any contacts with its environment
through nerve impulses, whether as input or output. ..
Countless independent systems are at work within humans that
determine, through their own structures, what operations will be
carried out. They are, however, independent’ [p 170]. DPB: I
like this as a very explicit explanation of why it is not possible
for an organism to be open to its environment. In addition it states
how this functions in an autopoietic system built of other
independent systems. ‘In the same way, what we experience as out
own mind operates as an isolated autopoietic system. There is no
conscious link between one mind and another. There is no operational
unity of more than one mind as a system, and whatever appears as a
“consensus” is the construct of the observer, that is, his own
achievement’ [p 170]. And in ultimo this means that the mind is
fully isolated: ‘The mind cannot consciously communicate. It can
imagine that it is communicating, but this remains an imagination of
its own system, an internal operation that allows the continuation
of its own thought process. This is not communication’ [p 170].
It is necessary to distinguish systems of the mind (e.g. conversation
management and planning) and communication (social) systems: both are
autopoietic and orienting their operations towards maintenance of
their own operational organization.
II
What do mind and communication have in common? A system of
consciousness can come into being and be active without
communication. Communication cannot come into being without
participation of the mind [p 171]. Assuming that there are some forms
of signaling without conscious involvement of the mind (attitude,
gestures &c.): ‘There is no communication without the mind;
but: can there be communication without the mind’s communicating?
We are faced with the following question: How is communication
possible if it has such a fluid, constantly changing foundation?’
[p 171]
. DPB: namely the volatile human mind. ‘The initial
answer is a postulate: The continuation of communication obviously
requires the maintenance of an organization that can cope with this
material’ [p 171-2]. It might be possible to describe
everything that is communicated on the level of mental states with
the exception of the autopoiesis of the emerging system, what is the
same as the description of what communication (or life) is [p 172].
DPB: autopoietic systems cannot be WIP. As a consequence Maturana’s
autopoietic concept of “the conservation of adaptation” can be
transferred from biology to sociology [p 172]. ‘Only when a
system, in its autopoietic reproduction, adapts itself to the field
in which it operates can it determine itself through its own
structures. And only when it is in contact with its environment
through its own structure can it continue its own operations.
Reproduction either does or does not take place. Communication either
is or is not continued. Whenever it does continue, it remains
adapted, no matter how self-dynamically it proceeds. It is not the
goal of communication to adapt itself to the respective mind. On the
contrary, communication fascinates and occupies the mind whenever,
and as long as, it continues. This is not its purpose, not its
meaning, not its function. Only, if it doesn’t happen, then it
doesn’t happen’[p 172]. DPB: more Spinoza, memetics. This
quote explains very well how mind and communication are entangled and
separate. It is hence possible to build a stable social system on a
multitude of volatile human brains that are not hooked up directly.
And once humans began to make utterances, they have never stopped:
‘In saying certain things, each communication therefore reduces
the possibilities of linkage, but still leaves open, by means of
meanings, a wide spectrum of connected communication, including the
possibility of negating or reinterpreting the received information or
declaring it untrue or unwelcome. The autopoiesis of social systems
is nothing more than this constant process of reduction and opening
of connective possibilities. It can be continued only if it is
already in progress’ [p 172]. DPB: This reminds of the
restrictions of Oudemans with regards to the monads: each state leads
to an attractor or a repeller such that the number of possible future
states can change. Episodes have a contemplated ending; they serve as
a transition to another possibility of communication; they can be
determined by purposes. ‘Society is purposeless and must be treated
in communication as untreatable through communication. It is possible
to say: Stop! But the end of society can only be brought about by the
and of its nonsocial conditions’ [pp. 172-3]. Autopoietic systems
such as society and consciousness end when their operations are no
longer continued. ‘Only an observer can talk about a beginning
and an end’ [ p 173]. DPB: this reminds of Maturana’s
explication that the only one talking is the observer. This also
reminds me of the part of the theory concerning the starting of a
firm; in connection it reminds me of the concept of a Job: there will
be processes running on brains always, but they sometimes coagulate
into some pattern at this location and then the coagulation dissolves
(there) but the Jobs continue to exist and might form a pattern
elsewhere in some different configuration of them. It is only the
observer of the coagulation (the pattern) that strikes it as
noteworthy that this patter of Jobs dissolves and another one
emerges, through replacement or transposition or pure disappearance
of one and emergence of another: ‘The observer observes through
the use of a distinction. In this case, he distinguishes beginning
and non-beginning, or ending and non-ending. A system that observes
itself can proceed only in this way. .. In observation, the end of
observation remains a paradox – a reentry of a distinction into
itself. It is all the more important that, on the basis of its own
operations, a system is able to observe when another begins or ends,
free of paradox’ [p 173]. A system’s observation of its own
demise remains a paradox, but for an observing system to observe the
demise of another system should not be. ‘The evolution of social
communication is possible only in a constantly operative link with
states of consciousness’ [p 173]. First speech then writing
then printing, but: ‘Decisive in this process is not the
symbolic character so often claimed in for these developments but
rather the differentiation of special experiential
objects that are either extraordinary or fascinating’ [p 173].
DPB: I wonder what these objects can be with regards to the concept
of a firm; I assume they must have some connection with the belief
systems of capitalism. In this sense language and script guarantee
the conservation of adaptation (concerning autopoietic systems) in
the communication system: ‘.. the constant accommodation
of communication to the mind. They define the free space of
autopoiesis within the social communication system’ [p 173].
DPB: should this be seen as a buffer and a cache required by the
communication system to be able to remain on its domain of
interactions and hence this represents its free space. The
conservative view, common opinion, mass media and market prices do
not change this process, but they enable a more effective recursivity
in the observation of the observation of others.
III
‘The mind thinks what it thinks and nothing else. From the
perspective of an observer – either an another mind or a
communication system that communicates about the observed mind –
the mind can be seen as a medium that could accept and transmit a
myriad of conditions. The observer can imagine the mind (doing what
it does) as freedom, above all the freedom to allow itself to be
influenced’ [p 174]. The observing one way or the other is done
by an observer (and nobody else). But the mind itself does the
changing of its states and structures and nothing else (and the
observer might abstract from this to some extent). ‘Just as
visual and auditory perception use light and air precisely because
these cannot be seen or heard as media, so communication uses the
mind as a medium precisely because communication does not thematize
the mind in question. Metaphorically speaking, the mind in question
remains invisible to communication’ [p 175]. DPB: spot on: the
mind is a ‘tabula rasa’, I have raised ample evidence of this.
Now this is more evidence but from a different angle: that the mind
should not be thematized because it must evolutionary remain free to
be inscribed with different themes: ‘When it becomes visible, it
becomes disruptive, just as the strong whoosh and whistle of the air
inside a car traveling at high speed disrupt words of communication.
The mind functions as a medium when it is assumed that it can take in
everything that is said’ [p 175]. But how can the mind be a
structurally determined system and a medium at the same time? ‘Mind
is no more a medium “in itself” than are light and air. It only
allows for the evolution of language ( .. ), just as language is
again a medium in which the mind can imprint concrete expressions by
putting together words into sentences and eventually producing a
corresponding communication in a way that does not use up the medium’
[p 175]
. This last argument is great, the formulation is not so
great. ‘The law of medium and form (Luhmann 1986b) states that
the the more rigid form prevails over the softer medium. .. This
requires a temporalization of the elements. Sentences that are
thought and spoken are only parts of a process that disappear at the
moment of their generation. .. Just imagine the noise that would
result if spoken words did not fade away but remained audible!’
[p 176]
.
IV
‘Communication is possible only as an autopoietic system. With
the help of language, it reproduces communication from communication
while using this structural requisite of its own reproduction to
employ the mind as a medium. The mind therefore participates in
communication as a structurally determined system and as a medium.
This is possible only because the mind and communication, psychic
systems and social systems, never fuse or even partially overlap but
are completely separate, self-referentially closed,
autopoietic-reproductive systems. As I said: humans cannot
communicate’ [p176]. DPB: this perfectly explains the threesome
relation between the mind, the communication social system and
language. But isn’t language itself also an autopoietic system of
the social class? ‘Perceptions remain locked up in the activated
mind and cannot be communicated. .. Reports of perception are
not perceptions themselves; thus communication operates blindly ..’
[p 177]
. What is the relation of independence between these systems?
‘Systems of communication can be stimulated only by systems of
the mind, and these in turn are extremely attracted to what is
conspicuously communicated by language. My argument is as follows:
the independence of each closed system is a requirement for
structural complementarity, that is, for the reciprocal initiation
(but not determination) of the actualized choice of structure’
[p 177]
. DPB: this reminds of the mechanisms of co-evolution (or
perhaps rather coadaptation). Communications systems can exist in
very complex environments; but that environment can only stimulate
and influence a small part of the system’s possibilities:
‘Apparently, then, no system could observe its environment (or
more generally, develop cognition) if it had to ward off every event
in its environment with an internal state. The lack of
connectability between operations assumes a distinct limitation of
sensibility toward outside events (Roth 1986)’ [p 177]. ‘Their
(of autopoietic systems) sensibility is limited to a narrow spectrum
of possible stimuli, and it is precisely in this area that their own
operations are organized in a manner that is unspecific as to
stimuli. Communication operates with an unspecific reference to the
participating state of mind; it is specially unspecific as to
perception. It cannot copy states of mind, cannot imitate them,
cannot represent them. This is the basis for the possibility of
communication’s building up a complexity of its own and refining
itself to such an extreme that it would be highly unlikely to
reproduce itself without being adapted to an environment it cannot
know’ [p 178]. DPB: the system has a chance to become cognitive
and then to become more sophisticated just because its range of
possible sensibilities is limited. Only there is it organized such
that it is unspecific to perceptions. This reminds me of a unit of
computation and more specifically, one that has become complexified
to the point that it can exhibit complex behavior and in addition
that it can perform universal computations.
V
The interaction between systems of the mind and systems of
communication is not integrated into a supersystem: ’Instead,
systems of the mind are capable of observing communicative systems,
and communicative systems are able to observe systems of the mind’
[p 179]
. A concept of observation is therefore needed such that it is
not attributable to either kind of system: ‘Observation is
introduced here as a theoretical concept of difference. Observation
is making a distinction. An operative foundation, whether of the mind
or of communication, is not crucial for this definition, but it does
assume that observation can be accomplished as an operation and as
such is itself an operation (that is, it can observe itself only with
the help of another operation. Operations of the mind and of
communication proceed blindly. They do what they do. They reproduce
the system. Meaning comes into play only on the level of observation,
with all the provisions demonstrated by logic and hermeneutics: ..’
[p 179]
. DPB: this is the earlier definition but it also reminds of
individuation!
VI
‘How can it (a mind) arrive at the idea that there are similar
phenomena outside itself?’ [p 180]. The Kantian solution is
that one recognizes a similarity of some thing with one’s mind and
so on; and this solution has been assumed by radical constructivism:
‘But how can a mind arrive at such an idea except by perceiving
an analog to itself by itself?‘ [pp. 180-1]. In other words:
how can the mind arrive at the idea that an interior exists within
the other similar to one’s own interior but different to other
systems? ‘The mind does not arrive at an analogy through
another, similar case. It can take part in communication only if it
can distinguish between utterance and information. An utterance is
chosen from various behaviors; information is chosen from various
facts; and communication combines the two into one event (Luhmann
1995b, 137ff.)’ [p 181]. DPB: this reminds me of the logistical
model and how people construct expressions from memes and perceived
ideas based on memes: the information is the core idea and the
utterance is the way it is expressed. But I cannot discern here how
the ideas are connected as per my connotations. I find it interesting
however that communication is an amalgamate of information and
utterance. But to know this is relevant for participation in a
communication.
VII
The idea that people can communicate between them or even with the
system is widespread in the social communication system; neither is
the case: no system can effect operations outside of its own
boundaries. This means that every expanse of the range of operative
possibilities, and every increase of its complexity means an
expansion of the system: no system is able to use its own operations
to establish contact with the environment, because that would
necessitate one end of the operations at least to take place at then
end of the environment, and hence outside of the system [p 182]. For
the “individual and society” theme, a concept with curious title
‘interpenetration’ was chosen: ‘”Interpenetration” can
only mean: the unity and complexity (as opposed to specific
conditions and operations) of the one is given a function within the
system of the other’ [p 182]. The form that interprenetration
takes can only be demonstrated in the structures and operations of
the individual systems, and therefore it takes a different form in
systems of the mind than in those of communication. Systems of the
mind are socialized with systems of communication by processes of
interpenetration. Communication systems experience interpenetration
by the personal encounters of people in their physical and mental
environment. ‘I call this (again with reference to Parsons)
“inclusion”’ [p 183]. ‘Everyone knows, of course, that the
word “human being” is not a human being. We must also learn that
there is nothing in the unity of an object that corresponds to the
word. Words such as “human being”, “soul”, “person”,
“subject΅, and “individual” are nothing more than what they
effect in communication. They are cognitive operators insofar
as they enable the calculation of continued communication’ [p
183]. DPB: this belongs to monads also: the section where the name is
explained and the position of essentialism.
9 I See Something You Don’t See
The relevance of the Frankfurt School is the subject. Start with a
critique on the ontological presuppositions of knowledge. Ontology is
understood to indicate that an observer operates with the distinction
being/nonbeing; and with the help of this distinction the observer
designates what he deems relevant. He needs one value to designate
and one more value to control his observation, to reflect. In this
way the values designate and control, but the negative has no
correlate in reality (bivalent logic is specific for an observer; the
operations run whether they render true or false results). ‘As
long as there is one such observer, several observers are in the same
situation. They can point out errors to each other; that is to say,
they can break through the operative indistinguishability of
recognition and error. They can learn with one another because they
have only one value at their disposal to designate reality, and they
stand, as it were, under compulsion to agree. Accordingly, ontology
limits the observation of observers to two functions: critique and
learning. There is only one world for observers, even if they observe
one another – and hence there is perpetual conflict
among them’ [p 188]. ‘Knowledge is objective is all
observers agree about it. One can hence ignore the differences among
the observers. One need observe not the observers but rather only
reality itself, in order to recognize what the observers are
observing. This does not hold for subjective knowledge. Here, one
must observe the observer to recognize what he can and cannot
observe. .. The neocybernetics of the theory of observing
systems solves the problem in another way, namely by transferring all
knowledge onto the level of the observation of observers’ [p
188]. Postmetaphysical thought has proceduralized these premises: the
observers develop procedures to come to an agreement; the conflict of
opinion is reduced to argumentation; they subordinate themselves to
the norm of joint insight; that defines rational communication for
them (and if they don’t reach it they at least have to want it,
lest they are not rational: ‘They act, I would now say, under
the assumption that they live in one and the same world and that it
is a matter of reporting in accord about this world. Thereby,
however, they are nothing but victims of the bivalence of their
apparatus, the ontological structure of their primary distinction.
Only for this reason is nonconflictual agreement a condition of
rationality for them’ [p 189]. Francois Lyotard critiques that
there is no unified account, but each account produces a difference.
‘Reality is only what is observed. But in contrast
to the subjective deviation of idealism, the empirical observation of
empirical observers is essential for what is ultimately accepted as
reality. In this context, an abstraction of the concept of
observation is first presupposed. Observation is the use of a
distinction to designate one and not the other side. To draw a
distinction is to mark a border, with the consequence that one can
reach one side from the other only by crossing the border. Spencer
Brown calls this “form”’ [p 190]. The use of distinctions
is presupposed in every observation, and hence it is itself not
distinguishable in its use as an operation, but: ’The
distinction that is operatively used in observation but not
observable is the observer’s blind spot. Formulated in
logical terms, the observer is the excluded middle of this
observation; he is not the “subject” but rather the parasite
(Serres) of his observation. One can accordingly see what he
cannot see if one merely asks about which distinction he is using –
hence, for the ontologist, the distinction between being and
nonbeing; for the moralist, the distinction between good and bad; or
for Habermas, the distinction between technology and interaction,
system and lifeworld, and so on’ [p 190]. These distinctions
lead to a blind spot in the knowledge built on them and the question
is if that is a sustainable situation, namely insight into its own
blindness. Epistemology takes account of one simple observer, and
hence the world is ‘a condensate of experiences that can be
repeated’. Ontology is capable of exposing errors: ‘appearance
and deception are consequently aspects of an ontologically conceived
world’, and that includes the observation of other observers,
but only to detect errors; they are treated normatively and asked to
correct their erroneous opinions. ‘Second-order cybernetics, the
cybernetics of observing observers, leads to a thorough shiting of
this disposition. It grasps all observation, even its own, as being
dependent upon distinction. It must withhold forcing its own
distinctions upon the observed observer. .. It (instead) reckons with
the fact that, in a society that continually enables an observation
of observations, ultimately stable “eigenvalues” (David Hilbert,
Heinz von Foerster) arise that are no longer varied with further
observation’ [p 191]. Now it is also clearer how the difference
between subject and object comes to be, namely ‘by sheer virtue
of the fact that operations of “subjects” are often best
understood if one takes them to be induced by observation, that is,
unleashed by the observed object itself functioning as an observer’
[p 191]
. The distinction subject/object comes proves itself in an
operational stance, the observational praxis; his is a distinction
that can be applied to biological systems, to psychological systems
as well as to social systems, and perhaps even to electronic
machines: ‘.. if the complicated, two-termed operation of
observing observers succeeds’ [p 192]. ‘First, it is
simply necessary to contest that they (Frankfurt School and
Habermas’s theory of communicative action) represent the
philosophical discourse of modernity at all. This contestation does
not rely on the absurd thesis of a postmodern age. Disputes of this
sort are the product of literary inbreeding. One need only cast a
glance at the structural continuities of modern society, at the
dependence of the economy upon money, at the intensity of scientific
research, at the positive law that remains indispensable, at the
differentiation of intimate relations, at the state-related politics,
at the so-called mass media, to see that there can be no talk of a
transition to a postmodern society’ [p 192]. What appears to be
happening is the introduction of a transitional semantics related to
the wish to do away with the aristocratic forms of society but not
quit ready for modern society. This transitional semantics is now
exhausted. ‘The distinction, above all, between affirmative and
critical, a distinction so beloved in Frankfurt, misses the
connection to what offers itself to observation. It is a specific
case of blindness, for it excludes the possibility that what has
become realized as society gives cause for the worst fears,
but cannot be rejected. This holds if one considers the
evolutionary improbability of supporting structures – to name but a
few: the autonomy and reciprocal dependence (carried to an extreme)
of function systems; grave ecological problems; the short-term nature
of tenable perspectives in the economy and in politics. Finally,
one will be allowed to inquire as to the foundations of the emphasis
that, if no longer subject-theoretical, is at least humanist.
Apparently one requires this engagement in order to make normative
claims plausible. The theory sides with the human to join the latter
in battle against enemy forces. But isn’t this human merely an
invention of this theory, merely a veiling of this theory’s
self-reference? ~ If he or she were meant as an empirical object
(with the name of subject), the theory would have to declare who at
the same time are living and acting, on a discursive search for good
grounds’ [p 193]. This would imply a lengthy process,
especially because of the bounded rationality of the involved people
and the required simultaneity: ‘One cannot idealize society
without taking account of time’ [p 193].
